Close Encounters 9
by chezchuckles
Summary: Tomorrow Never Dies. After the events of CE8, Spy Castle recovers from the mortar shell and tries to go after Beckett.
1. Chapter 1

**Close Encounters 9: Tomorrow Never Dies**

* * *

Rick Castle felt the flame burn through his leg and twist his guts. He groaned, clawing at the darkness, unable to rise, the pain licking at his raw nerves. He was a live wire of agony and every movement drove spikes into his groin. He needed - he needed - there was something-

_Kate._

He felt her cool touch at the point of his greatest agony, the soft slide of her fingers numbing him like ice, spreading delicious, lovely relief everywhere she went.

_Kate._

She laid over him, her skin to his, cold and beautiful, and the fire began to abate, the hurt dampen and recede, drawn out by the heavy weight of her, dragging him down, and down, and deeper into darkness.

_Kate._

"I'm sorry, son."

* * *

He couldn't breathe.

And then it came.

A rasp of air in his lungs and the inflation of his chest, too tight and rusty. The exhalation left with a groan, and his eyes dragged open at the sound.

For too long, there was only the nothing that wouldn't resolve. A blankness that wasn't even darkness but just a scrambled sense that something should be coming to him.

The ache behind his eyes was real. That ache sharpened to the agony of an ice pick, but his vision resolved. It was the beige and grey of an Army hospital overseas. Knew that much. That part worked. What else?

A twitching finger let him know it was his own and he turned his head slowly to look. Pain flashed like lightning behind his eyes even though he hadn't closed them, and then it flickered and crashed through the storm clouds of his irises, a layer imprinted over the thin skein of his sight.

His finger. His hand. His arm.

Sensation came back to him too slowly and he let out another breath, forgetting for a moment that he had to work at that too - the in and out of it. The pain in his head seemed to split at his eyes and work its way to his skull, like it was traveling the path of a jagged crack, widening and deepening even as he laid there.

"_Hurts_," croaked out of him, before he even knew he had voice to speak.

And then, when the silence came back to him like perverted sonar, a wash of stilted quiet over his body that signified something necessary and dire like _drowning_, Castle fought back the swaddling arms of drugs that seemed to drag him away from that very important _nothing_.

Nothing.

There was nothing.

The beige and grey blurred into the fringe of his lashes and the heavy weight of his eyelids.

He breathed in, sterile and too cold the air. The nothing, the absence, the lack that seemed to ripple with every movement only to be negated by every wave of sedation.

He was going.

_kate_

He was gone.

* * *

"Kate!" he shouted, hoarse and coming awake as he bolted upright.

Panic clawed at him and he ripped at lines and tubes that clung like spiderwebs, reached for the railing of his hospital bed to haul himself out and over-

"Fuck," he gasped, collapsing to the floor in an agony of defeat. "Fuck. What. . ."

His voice was raw, his throat ached. His leg was twitching with uncontrollable agony, jerking without his say, and he pushed up with his arms only to have the room spin and dip, a wild ride.

"Ffff..."

"What are you doing? What have you done?" Male nurse. Hurrying. The press of powerful arms around his shoulders and Castle groaned as he was lifted to his feet.

"Where..."

"Back in bed," the man said tersely. It wasn't English. What was he speaking? Why could Castle understand it? His head ached so badly that he had to close his eyes.

"No. Where's - my wife. My wife. Kate."

"What?"

His words were scrambled. French and English. Not what the nurse was speaking. Why couldn't he get a handle on his words? Everything was a jumble; his head was in a vise and being squeezed ever tighter.

"Let's get you back into bed. On my count. One, two-"

He cried out when his leg torqued, cursed violently even as the nurse got him back into the bed. His hands shook on the mattress and he raised one to his eyes, swallowed hard.

Kate. Kate.

"Where's my wife?" he asked again, German this time? Something. He couldn't understand himself even as the words left his mouth. He was scrambled hard; nothing worked right.

His leg.

"You have a man outside. I will tell him you are awake."

A man. A man. Fuck.

Was he captured? Was he in enemy hands?

What had happened to Kate?

* * *

He woke breathing hard with no oxygen, breathing hard and nothing, the weight of it on his chest.

A hand at his chest. An arm holding him down, holding him under the burn of pain that licked at his groin and down his leg until his toes curled and he cried out.

"Let the drugs work, son."

The face that hovered over his was the twisted grimace of a nightmare and he jerked, thrashing, tried to move.

_Black._

"Get the straps."

His mouth wouldn't work, his head pulsed in agony, hands came and held him down, excruciating against the burn that scratched its nails at his inside thigh.

"No-"

"It's okay, son. It's to keep you from pulling out the stitches."

He grunted and the burn eclipsed all else, everything blotted out by the flame of agony that flared and twisted and ate at him, hungry mouths and talons.

A pinch of a vicious insect at his neck and suddenly the world melted like taffy and drooped, Dali clocks all, and whatever he was, whoever he was in this bed with the demon riding his chest, he couldn't tell, couldn't care, fell back to the dark and the void-

Where it was quiet like water

and nothing burned

_kate_

_who is kate?_

* * *

The drip. The clock on the wall. A language Babeled against him like water, buffeting, buoying, bringing him up.

The blur of beige as his eyes rolled back again.

Shorter this time, the awareness.

It burned. She was on fire. There was fire. No. Not fire but-

The nothing was wrong.

The melt of water was wrong.

He couldn't wake.

* * *

"Kate!"

Darkness. And alone. And the moonlight silver across his cheeks as he cried. Why was he crying? He hadn't cried since he was five years old.

No, since he'd found Kate in the forest on the property of Stone Farm, a broken thing. Was Kate trying to ride the horse again? Damn it, if she'd sneaked out of bed to ride a fucking horse-

His leg collapsed under him when he moved to go after her, a sudden drop that left him more surprised than hurt. Why was he now on the floor?

The moonlight burned his face where the tears had been and he raised a hand to his cheek, touched the wetness that burned.

No. No, it was the leg. The leg burned. Hot but also-

The floor was cool, the tile cool, the low-lying was cool to the touch and felt like her fingers over his skin, so sweet, so soft, the way she brushed his hair back and made everything okay again.

"Kate," he sighed and closed his eyes on the floor, against the floor, the touch of her. "Thanks, sweetheart."

And he was asleep in the moonlight.

* * *

"Nice to finally have you with us."

Castle swallowed thickly and tried to breathe. "Where-"

"A hospital on base in Turkey."

He nodded but the memories wouldn't come. A jagged edge of nothing in his head. "Eyes hurt," he said, and closed them.

"You have some time," he heard, but it was far off.

"Must be good drugs," he murmured.

"It is. Better than before. I'm sorry for that."

Had his father ever apologized? "Is Eastman here?" Castle sighed, felt the heavy hand on hist chest that made everything easier, harder, made the nothing so alluring and the black - the black- "Tell him to go home."

The Black.

"I'll tell him. Rest, son."

Wait.

Wait, no. . .

* * *

Her fingers in his.

The tap and the texture, the smooth glide of her thumb around and around the back of his hand. The sunlight that dappled her skin as she sat by him. He lifted his head to the Italian morning and smiled into the tug of her hand. He couldn't see her face for all the light, just the shimmer of her hair and the grape coming towards him.

She hummed and the fruit was pushed past his lips, the juice cool like water down his throat. His throat hurt. His eyes ached with light.

_Kate. Let's go inside. It's bright out here._

She had to be smiling but he couldn't see it; her hand closed tighter around his and she was standing, a sharp relief against the light. She bent over him and caressed his face with those fingers, the catch of her nail at his bottom lip.

He felt her kiss and breathed it in, breathed.

_No, baby. Stay out here with me._

* * *

He stayed.

Castle measured the moments by the clock hanging on the wall across from him. The beige unrelenting and uniform meant he was in an army base hospital. He'd been in enough to know. Smelled like it too. Dust and antiseptic and a flare of local color.

He stayed.

Five minutes conscious.

He had the phantom impression of awakenings like bruises against his skin, but he remembered nothing.

Army base hospital. He held on to that. And to the clock across from him that read 6:15, though whether it was morning or night-

Ah, the sun was pearling the sky just beyond the window. All right. Morning then.

He still stayed.

He was awake.

Castle moved his arm slowly for the call button, the bright red circle at the railing of the bed, and he pushed it.

Time to get this thing started.

Figure out what was real.

* * *

A nurse first, with nothing helpful. And then the doctor, a Turkish man with wire-rimmed glasses and drooping eyes who nevertheless seemed both familiar and comforting. Something about him. Something about fish. Gutting fish. He imagined the knife in his hand and the steady way he worked, saw himself sitting beside him on the back porch and the sunlight-

"Kate."

The doctor blinked and stopped talking. Castle frowned at the name but it was - it was the blinding light behind his eyes that ached - it was the pain. It was the agony, and the nothing waited behind it, and he clung instead to wakefulness and the here and the clock on the wall.

"Kate?" the doctor asked.

A dock. The water lapping at his feet and her body curled around his legs in the lake and that smile as she teased. . .

"My wife," he said.

The ring, Italy and the wedding, the fire - the bomb - the _mortar shell-_

"My wife was - we were together. Kate. Where is she? Where's my wife?"

"I'm sorry. I do not know. I do not know this one you speak of."

English, broken bits of English floated through his head. Kate. The agony flared behind his eyes and he closed them, sucked in a breath. "Kate. My wife. Kate Beckett. She was with me. Do you know if she's here?"

"I'm sorry. Your condition was touch and go, as they say. Your leg - you will keep it, thankfully."

"What?" he rasped, attention jerked back to the man before him. He looked like Jim. Jim Beckett, that was it. That was the point of connection. He'd forgotten. For a handful of minutes, Castle had forgotten.

His heart twisted.

"Your leg. No, do not worry. We saved the leg. Look, your heart rate is climbing - you must understand. The leg is okay now. Blood poisoned but - poisoning, blood poisoning - but you have survived."

"Can you - who came in with me?"

"A man. I do not know. But that's how it is, right? I do not know any of the men."

"No - woman? There wasn't a woman?"

The doctor with Jim's kind eyes shook his head. "I'm sorry. Here. We can give you more medication. The pain will recede in time."

"No," he got out, trying to sit up. "No, I don't need-"

"Your heart rate is accelerating. That is not good for you. The pain must be great; I can see it in your face - pinched and like wax. Let me adjust this."

"No," he growled, but his elbows were giving out and he couldn't move his legs at all. Not at all. His legs - restrained. His legs were velcroed to the bed. Holy shit. What the hell?

"Wait. No," he said, catching the doctor's hand. But he was weak, very, and his grip was shaken off like shooing a fly, natural and easy, a practiced gesture.

"You need rest. The infection is clearing up, and you need to rest."

Already his head was pounding with the light - every time he reached back to remember, it pulsed hard. He tried to resist, but the medication, the drugs, the black oblivion was engulfing him. He wanted the light.

"Please," he murmured. _Kate._

It was Turkish. Not English.

They were speaking Turkish.

* * *

Castle began in Turkish, the moment awareness came to him and he sensed the presence in the room.

"My wife. Kate. Do you know where my wife is?"

A hand was at his elbow, the touch of the IV and the shift of the needle under his skin.

"My wife," he tried again, felt the broken bits of English slip out. "Kate. A woman with me. She was with me."

Spanish mixed with Porteguese maybe. He couldn't be sure any more. The words came out.

"My-"

"Hush now, hush. You're like a little child. Rest."

It was not the doctor; a nurse maybe? A woman with soft fingers. Not his wife.

It was not his wife and he couldn't make his legs work.

His eyes opened. She was smiling, her fingers were deft as they replaced the IV. She untangled the tubing from his arm and hung the clear bag from the IV stand and even then she watched him.

"My wife," he tried again, and this time the English was there.

She brightened, understanding on her face. "You've been transferred to Germany. A base. I'm Marieta, the night nurse."

Germany? "No," he groaned, eyes slipping shut.

"Don't worry, Mr. Smith. We're taking care of you."

_Smith._ Beckett. Kate. "Kate. My wife. Kate Beckett, please. Someone has to tell me. . ."

"Everything is going to be fine. You need to rest. The infection is clearing up nicely, Mr. Smith. You'll be up and about in a few days."

Days, days, no. He didn't have days. His wife - Kate. They'd been on mission. Where. There was bright light, too bright, and his eyes ached in his head, pulsed fiercely sharp. "I have to-"

"Rest. You must rest."

He didn't want to. But he was powerless.

* * *

He grunted at the movement and heard the voice.

"Do what has to be done. Enough of this."

"Sir, we can't cut him off the pain medication cold turkey-"

"This is too much. You don't know him like I do. This is too much - look at him. I brought him here because you're the best, but this is ridiculous. Half the dosage."

"Black," Castle rasped, and then he opened his eyes to his father.

"Son. I'm fixing this."

Castle swallowed tightly and licked his chapped lips, let out a short breath as his ribs ached. "Where's Beckett?"

"All in good time."

"Don't fuck with me," he said, but he'd lost all control of the words. They didn't come out right - or strong - and his father was taking the nurse and the doctor back with him to the door. "Black!"

He wheezed and closed his eyes at the effort but his father hadn't even paused.

Felt like a damn elephant had sat on his chest. One of Beckett's elephants. Damn her elephants for it; he couldn't breathe. He was so tired. He was so... very tired.

* * *

"You feel more with it this morning?"

Castle stared and the air and light resolved into merely an ache. His father was standing over him, half of his face drooping and twisted from Castle's own fists - a long time ago now.

"I feel like shit," he admitted, moving his hand over the mattress until he realized he was looking for Kate's fingers. For her strength. "Where's Beckett?"

His father sat down in the chair beside his bed - her chair, where she was supposed to be - and steepled his fingers up by his mouth.

"Just tell me," Castle said dully. "She's not here. There's a reason."

"There was - an incident."

"Mortar shell," he rasped, fought to clear it out of his voice, out of his eyes. "And?"

"I don't know."

"The hell you don't know-"

"Son. I don't know. We went back looking for her."

_Yeah, right._

"I went myself. Took the lightcraft back out-"

"In the lightcraft chopper?" he said sharply. "That doesn't hold passengers."

"It was... necessary. Your leg - shrapnel nearly nicked the artery. It was touch and go."

"I've heard that before. Beckett. Where is Beckett?"

"Son, I went looking myself."

He closed his eyes. "No."

"Son-"

"Stop calling me son."

"Richard," he said instead, calm. Always so damn calm. "She's gone."

"I don't accept that. Beckett was with me. There was the mortar but she - she was - there was the mortar..."

"And then?" his father asked.

Castle gritted his teeth, felt his nails too long and cutting his palms as he clenched his fists. "And then..."

"There was the mortar and then?"

He dragged in a breath, pushed it out, but there was only the bright light, the ache behind his eyes that burned.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I don't know."

* * *

He woke again when there was nothing. Alone. He tasted her on his lips like a kiss.

Castle raised his hand to cover his eyes, realized it was one of her moves - the thing she did when she was trying to keep it together.

She was alive - she had to be alive. He would make every decision from here on out on that basic assumption: Kate Beckett lived.

Okay. What did he have?

_Nothing._

Fuck, he had nothing. He had - Black was being his usual close-mouthed self, making the most of _whatever_ had happened to Beckett. Was she back in Turkey inside some Turkish hopsital without protection? Had Black spirited him away just to-

No. No. Okay. He had to think. He needed... he needed _something_.

His head ached like an overripe melon, split at the seams, all the grey matter soured and running out. He pressed his fingers into his eyes and squeezed out tears, growled at himself in the darkness of the hospital room.

He just had to think. He had to think.

Prove the facts - one way or another. The mortar shell and then...

No, no. Work backwards. Black had said - Black had said what? _I went back to look._ Okay. So. He'd not found her body, right? And he'd flown the chopper that they were supposed to load the plutonium-

The plutonium. The nuclear weapons. The whole thing came back to him in a great rush and he moaned, the way the memories fit jaggedly and sparked agony behind his eyes.

The plutonium. Castle had been carrying it. He'd messaged the chopper to pick it up. The plan was - they would load the plutonium and then they were going to hike to the car and head for the border, cross into Kazakhstan on the IDs in his pocket.

Castle's hand went immediately to his thigh, but he was wearing a hosptial gown, a stiff and thin blanket draped over his legs and chest. Nothing. He had nothing. He didn't _know_, damn it, he had nothing to work with here.

"Come on, Beckett," he growled.

His voice was cracking, the black was wrapping around him and pulling him under, gentler this time but still relentless.

No. No. Think.

_Kate Beckett lives._

He needed a plan.

But he had nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Close Encounters 9**

* * *

Castle managed to find awareness just as the nurse was putting his chart back at the foot of his bed to leave.

"Hey," he rasped. "Hey, wait."

He seized the opportunity when she paused, gave her a wilted smile.

"What's... where am I?" he started. He knew the answer, but it was safe and it gave him time to think as she delayed at his bed.

"Germany. Rammstein Air Force Base."

He swallowed. _Think_. He had to know. Information. He had nothing but his mind - as cracked as it seemed to be - and he needed to get access to information.

"Did I - come in with any-" He paused, considered the sudden wariness that had come over the nurse's face. She'd been warned then. "Did I come in with any_thing_?"

"Oh, your personal effects? Yes. We've got them in a bag, right here."

Okay, okay. Good. He needed to stop asking about Beckett; they'd been told he was - what? Going to tear out his stitches and go rampaging through the hospital looking for her?

Well, fuck, yes. He would.

"Can you hand them to me?" he asked, giving her another smile, going with sheepish this time. Playing the wounded vet. That's usually what Black told them when they came in. Wounded vet. Black ops mission, top secret.

The nurse smiled back - pity and sympathy both - and gave him the bag with his personal effects inside.

He clutched his fingers around it, the hard edges of his things, and let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He smiled at her again, this one more real, and she patted his uninjured leg.

"You need anything more, you just press the button."

She left and he laid there for too long a moment, feeling the shape of things in the plastic bag clutched in his hand, struggling not to hope too hard, not to jump to conclusions.

Castle opened his hands and the heavy plastic crinkled dully, not even closed all the way. He stared at the contents and willed his brain to work, to process.

His weapon, no clip. The flat wallet which held - he saw as he opened it shakily - both his ID and Kate's, and their papers. He fished around in the bottom of the bag and his breath caught, his body singing with pain as his fingers gripped the last item.

His phone.

His phone was in the plastic bag.

The phone he'd given to Kate right before the mortar shell had hit.

She was alive. She was-

Or.

She'd _been_ alive.

* * *

Castle flexed his toes and then his foot, flex and release, testing it out. The pain was there, present, but it was masked by the drugs. He knew that would wear off, but he had developed - over the last twenty years - a high threshold for pain. He would survive it, even without the drugs.

He'd already withdrawn the IV. It dripped to the floor, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

He had his phone clutched in one hand as a talisman, his heart thundering every time his thoughts came to touch on it. Kate was alive. She'd gotten back to him at some point _after _the mortar shell and put the phone on him.

He knew in some corner of his brain that things weren't working correctly, that his synapses were glitchy, but he kept going.

There had to be a way to get to the restraints.

It was just velcro. Velcro straps over his ankles, his knees. He'd unthreaded the one looped around his hips and it'd taken entirely too long. He'd had to rest in between every movement, and at one point, unconsciousness had taken him.

But he had hours before the next bedcheck, hours before the night nurse came in and did the usual drill - temperature, heart rate, etc. He had to be ready to go. Had to get back to Russia, to Kate, to-

He didn't know. He couldn't think about it too hard.

His fingers shook as he worked at the strap around his knee. Everything was spinning, dizzy, but he ignored it to scratch at the velcro. It felt like industrial strength. He got his fingers under one corner, but it didn't matter; the stap was brutally resisting him.

Castle groaned out and flopped back to the bed, panting, black spots erupting over his vision. The agony behind his eyes throbbed again, and he pressed his hand against them, tried to breathe.

He had the phone.

But she was the one who was supposed to have it. He'd given her the phone at the last minute, thinking only that she'd have it on her at least, she'd have the GPS signal to track for cases _just like this, Beckett, damn it. _He'd needed to know he could find her again, and why in the hell had she given it back to him? He was the one who'd gotten rescued.

Fuck. Fuck, he'd been rescued and she had been out there alone.

He growled and squeezed tighter, opened his eyes to distract himself from the pulsing burn of sharp coals that seemed to be his sockets. He stared at the phone, knew only that it meant she was alive. Had been alive. Was. Was alive.

His fingers went automatically to turn it on, a muscle spasm, and even though his whole body shook with exhaustion, he made himself sit up again.

The phone was dead. It didn't turn on.

The phone was-

Low battery. Right. Shit, he remembered now. Fuck. No wonder she hadn't kept it. Worthless anyway. It'd been low all night and she'd probably only have time to text something and then-

Mitchell. Mitchell might know. If his father really had been the one to fly him out of there, Castle couldn't believe Kate had called him for help. She'd texted back to base - to Mitchell. Mitchell would be able to fill in the blanks. Castle had no way of knowing what his father had done to Kate. What had happened. But Kate wasn't stupid. She - if anyone - knew exactly what his father was capable of. She'd have done _something_, right?

He couldn't trust Black. Not a moment, not with anything. He couldn't.

If Black knew that Beckett had given him back this phone, it'd be gone. If Black knew-

First thing he had to do, Castle had to charge this phone. Call Mitchell. Find out what had happened.

Cut off like this, Black could tell him anything. Black could _do_ anything, and Castle would never know. He would never - it could already be too late.

Castle reached for the restraints once more and set to digging his fingers under the end of the strap, rip the velcro free.

He had to find his wife. He _had_ to find her.

* * *

"Richard, that's not a good idea."

He gritted his teeth as the nurse reinserted the IV, cut his eyes to his father. "You know I don't handle the pain meds well."

"I know. I've already cut it down quite a lot."

"I don't want it."

"You need to heal. You know the regimen."

"Fuck the regimen; the pain meds make me sick."

And stupid. But he didn't say that.

"This is how we proceed. This is always how we proceed. We've honed this to a fine art, you and I."

Castle wanted to smash in his face. Again. Fuck him, fuck the regimen, fuck them all. He felt better and clearer-headed after five hours without IV drugs than he had since he'd woken up to find her missing.

He'd flipped the blanket over his work from the night, the velcro straps now - at least - unthreaded from his knees. He had only to get to his feet, but the effort of bending down and reaching for his ankles had made his pulse jackhammer at his eyes, had blacked out his vision so that he couldn't even see to get the restraints off.

He would work on it again tonight. Maybe give himself a few hours of meds before yanking the IV out again.

The nurse patted his arm, pushing the tape into place at his elbow, and then moved away from the bed. He watched her go, still silent, and then turned to his father.

"How'd you get me into the chopper?" he said quietly. He'd thought about it all night. He'd seen, like a video replay in his head, his father walking away from him in the cave that day, the hunch of his shoulder and the impaired gait. He'd thought then that it was slightly exaggerated to lull them into a false sense of security, but the shuffle of his steps had never changed.

"How'd you do it?" he asked again. "I've seen what you're capable of now. I'm the one who made you like this."

"You're still my son."

"No," he said flatly. Would never be. Never. And if Black had done something to Beckett out there. If he'd hurt her-

He had the phone. She'd given him the phone - at some point after that mortar shell. She'd been alive.

She was alive.

He'd find her.

"You might never understand this, but you'll do anything for your son."

His throat closed up, but he was determined not to let Black see it. None of it. How that was supposed to be - Castle was supposed to - Kate was his wife and if he couldn't get to her, how was he ever supposed to fucking understand what he'd do for his son?

They were supposed to build a family. They would. They would. He'd fucking burn the hopsital down to get out of here, to _find her._

"You aren't capable of getting me on that chopper," he said instead. "You'd have to have help."

"Richard."

"I don't care what you say, that nerve damage to your face? I did that. I know what that does. I know how it immobilizes you. Your whole left side, you fucking bastard. You'd never be able to carry an unconscious man into a helicopter."

"I don't know what happened to her, Richard."

"After she helped you, you mean," he said coldly, his heart beating wildly in his chest, his rage so thick it choked. "After she fucking helped you carry me into that chopper."

"Son-"

"Fuck," he growled, closed his eyes. He felt the phone digging into his back where he'd shoved it down inside the pillow case; it refocused him. He opened his eyes. "Fuck you. What'd you do to her?"

"I don't know what happened to her. I got you to a Red Cross clinic in Kazakhstan - the chopper couldn't make a longer flight. It had to be refueled and I had to get Malone there so he could fly it to the recon point - can't leave a black ops chopper with the Kazakhstan officials, you know that. I had to wait for permission to recross the border with a passenger chopper-"

"You delayed. You fucking delayed." His head was pounding. He felt brittle and breaking. He was going to come apart at the seams. Why the fuck was he still so damn _surprised_, so fucking _hurt_ that his father had done exactly what Castle knew he would? "She's my _wife_."

"It took time. When I got back-"

"Fuck you," he snarled. "Fuck you for leaving her there." And Castle himself for putting her there in the first place.

Black let out a noise and stepped back, like he was leaving. Castle stared after him, all of it building in his chest and threatening to crack him open.

His father made a motion of his hand, like dismissal. "She told me to. It was her idea."

God, damn it. God damn it, Kate Becktt. What the hell.

He was not going to cry. Not now. Not ever.

He was going to find her.

* * *

It was impossible to talk to the day nurse, and she came in so often that he knew his father was still there, patrolling the hallway like a guard dog, scaring the rabbits. Castle didn't try to push her - she wouldn't break; she was an Army nurse after all; she followed orders.

But the night nurse. If he could hold out until then. He could talk her into it. He could. He knew he could. He was the black ops veteran, putting the shattered pieces of his body back together under her watchful care, right? She'd want to save him, rescue him. She'd be sucked into his romantic tale.

He just had to wait. He had to _wait_, but he didn't even know if he could afford it. Beckett was - if _Castle_ had been knocked unconscious, his leg ripped open with shrapnel, what had happened to her? She'd been with it enough to carry him to that chopper but that meant nothing. He knew what he could do himself if it came to her, and she was the same. They were cut from the same cloth; anything was possible if it meant saving the other.

Which was why he worked the tape off his elbow and carefully studied the IV. It was a fixed point of entry into his vein, but he could see where the line came in and attached to the catheter, the pre-lubricated needle with the luer taper. Made it easy to remove the male fitting of the IV line and let the drugs soak into the washcloth he'd swiped from the cleaning woman's cart when she'd come in to collect his trash.

The IV was slow, steady, and he knew enough to cap the valve, keep the catheter clean and sterile as possible since he'd have to insert the IV again before the day nurse came back to check on him.

Already he felt the tremor in his limbs subside, the fuzziness abate. He handled pain meds poorly - his body went loopy and his stomach rolled - and he needed to be clear.

With his detox underway - even though he knew most of that was in his head - now came the thoughts he'd been pushing down for so long.

Kate. Alone out there.

Russian nights dipped below freezing, he knew from experience. There'd been no time to adequately attire themselves after running from Vadim at the hotel. They'd been outfitted in some cold-weather gear of his father's, but she'd only had that fleece thing, too big for her and hardly adequate protection. Alone out there.

Fuck.

His chest burned with it and he pressed his hand to his eyes so that the white pain flared hot and unmanageable. With the agony came that dream of her, Kate holding her hand out to him in the Italian sunlight, her profile in shadow but her soft laugh falling over him, _stay outside with me_.

Kate. God, Kate.

Her hip - the bullet had grazed her hip and he was so damn grateful he'd insisted on treating her right then, not waiting for civilization. At least it was stitched and he'd sterilized everything. At least there was that. But, shit, it had to ache. Brutally in the cold.

He clenched his teeth and ground down hard until his jaw throbbed and the white behind his eyes novaed out into his face. Everything pulsed, the meds were ebbing away, he was beginning to see again.

Despite the blinding white, he could see clearly.

It was going to be impossible. He was going to have to sneak out of heavy guard at an Air Force base in Germany, fly back to Russia - probably via Turkey - and drive to Mayak, all the while dodging his father and convincing Mitchell to lend him support. And fucking hope his leg held up.

And then find her.

She could be anywhere. She could-

No.

Not yet. Just. He needed information. When the night nurse came on duty, he'd get her to charge the phone and then he'd call Mitchell and he'd _find out the truth_. He just had to be patient and stop imagining the worst.

It wasn't impossible. She was his wife. It wasn't impossible.

* * *

Food. Water.

It ran through his head on loop.

Food. Water.

No access to either of those unless she went back into Mayak. With Vadim's group there, and her cover as Sasha, he didn't want to think about what she might have to do just for those basic essentials.

No.

She wouldn't.

Food and water. Where? How? The car. She'd go back to their car; she had a go-pack there, just as he did - a few things leftover from his stop at the gas station convenience store. She had some money. Did she? He couldn't picture it...

Food and water. The car. There was a bottle in the car but it'd been how long now? He needed a timeline; first thing Beckett always did. Establish the timeline. He had to do that here. Figure out where everything went.

It'd been more than ten days. Probably. He had no calendar, no way of knowing, but the time he'd spent unconscious and then when he'd felt it return, and now when he could keep track - at least three days, maybe four. So ten? A guess was all it was. A guess. Fuck, he couldn't be guessing on this.

He had to go. He had to go _now_.

"Mr. Smith," came the rabbit voice.

He jerked his head up to see the day nurse and he panicked. The line wasn't in - he hadn't reattached it yet. Fuck. They'd sedate him if they knew. His father would-

"Hey," he said with a slow smile. "Can you - I mean. I know I can't have solid food yet, but is there any ice cream? A popsicle?"

She got that smoothed out, relieved look on her face. He was going to be docile, well-mannered; she could handle him again.

"Oh, yes sir. We've got some fruit popsicles. Do you want one?"

"Yes, please," he said, let his voice roughen and rasp. "Throat's dry."

"Oh. Oh, I was going to - well, I'll get it right now. I've got to change your IV - every 96 hours is regulation, but we like to get to it a little faster."

Every 96 hours meant what for his timeline? He'd been vaguely conscious the last time they'd changed it, so-

"I'll be right back," the day nurse said, pushing back out of his room.

Castle immediately turned and snagged the IV line, flipped open the valve in the catheter at his elbow and tried with unsteady hands to reattach it.

Fuck. Much harder than he'd thought.

His fingers twitched with the lack of drugs; always happened to him. His body cleaning out. If his father came in his room and saw the way he was trembling; he'd know. He'd know.

He had to be better than this. Had to. Ten days? Or more. More. Soon as he had the phone, the calendar on it would tell him.

The washcloth was sticky and wet at his side; he didn't know what to do with it. Think. He had to think.

He managed to wedge the tubing back into the valve, but fuck, the nurse wasn't stupid. She'd know he'd been messing with it. He hadn't been thinking it through, doing this one-handed. Every time he pushed to get it in, the needle dug in his arm and made contusions under his skin. It was jacked up - all of it - and the nurse would know.

Fuck. Okay. She'd just think he'd been messing with it - she wouldn't know he'd pulled it out. Have to do. It'd just-

It was the only plan he had. Get sober, get out of here.

Castle chucked the wet washcloth towards the trash can and at least it went inside. At least that went right.

Just as he smoothed tape back over the IV, the door opened once more.

"I've got two kinds! Orange or pomegranate?"

Shit. Now he was going to have to eat a popsicle.

* * *

His hands were trembling so badly he couldn't get the phone out of the fucking pillowcase. He had to upend the thing over his lap and then clutch it at his hip, breathing hard.

Everything hurt. Everything.

With lack of meds came clarity. With lack of meds came pain. The pain and the clarity felt like being scraped raw over the pavement while he was dragged behind a fast-moving horse. Every bit of skin that burned off was another damning realization.

He had no way of getting out of Germany even if he made it out of this damn hospital. Let alone _out of this damn bed._ He had no way to enter Russia without drawing unwanted attention and then once he got back to Mayak - or actually, just in the general vicinity of that damn underground lab - no way of mounting a fucking expedition.

Fuck, he was in agony. It was agony. If he - he was giving himself hits of the morphine just to mask the worst of the symptoms but the idea that he had drugs and she didn't - that he was in a hospital bed and eating a damn popsicle and whining about how hard it was going to be while she - while she-

Castle growled in the darkness and gripped the phone harder.

One step at a time. Amass the information - create the timeline. This was how he helped her, Kate, alone and stranded in Russia. Abandoned.

He panted as another wave of pain scraped against his nerve endings, closed his eyes to breathe. Abandoned. She was - Kate - he couldn't handle this. He couldn't not have her. It was too much, it was asking too much to not have her after being allowed these last few years with her. She couldn't be gone. Knowing how good, knowing how_ right_ it was even when they went at each other, even when their fights got out of control and their wounds so deep. They fit; they matched. They - he had to have her.

_Please don't make me do this without you._

"Mr. Smith? Sir? Are you - can I do anything?"

"Fuck," he groaned, eyes flashing open to see the night nurse hovering over him. He lifted his fisted hand and wiped the tears off his cheeks, sucking down a too-shallow breath and the urge to break apart. "No. I'm - I can-"

She stroked her fingers down his elbow, peeling at the tape. "I understand," she murmured soothingly. "The pain meds. They make you high and low. What do you have there?"

He felt the phone in his fist - iphone, just a regular locked iphone, and he could use this. He could use this moment of weakness. "My phone," he said, letting it trickle back into his voice. "I can't - it's dead."

"Oh, I see," she murmured. Her fingers were cool and efficient. She'd readjusted the IV line and was taping it again. "How about we make a deal, Mr Smith? You stop pulling out your IV, and I'll charge your phone? I have a cord back at the nurses' station."

Wild hope scrabbled at his insides like a feral cat. "You - I can - you will?"

"Leave the IV in your arm, and I will. The day nurse, Lydia, told me you'd been messing with it. But this looks more like you've taken it out."

He sucked in a breath. "I did."

"I'll take this," she said then and neatly plucked the phone right out of his grip. He grunted and lunged forward after it, but she held him down. Easily. Too easily. The pain behind his eyes lanced deep.

"I need - you have to - please don't let my CO see it," he said finally. "You can't let him see it." Black.

She narrowed her eyes at him, pursed her lips.

He took a shaky breath. "He doesn't know I have it. But the meds make me - I won't mess with the IV. I swear. But you can't let him know it's mine."

"He's right down the hall," she said then. She looked like she was choosing her words carefully. "I don't much like him."

Castle let out a huff of a laugh. "You and me both."

"He's an ass," she said decisively.

Castle shook his head. "No, worse. He's a cold-blooded, ruthless bastard. If he was an ass, I'd have a shot at outsmarting him."

She set her jaw and glanced to the door. "I understand."

And Castle thought maybe she did. "You'll charge it?"

"It will only take an hour," she said. "But I won't be able to come in here for no reason."

"If I call you-"

"Might get another nurse," she said, shaking her head. "I make rounds again in four hours. I'll bring it then."

"Thank you," he breathed out, so relieved his heart beat too hard and spiked on the monitor. She raised an eyebrow at him and shook her head.

"Just promise me? You do any outsmarting, you don't do it on my shift."

He stared at her a moment and then he nodded. "You got a deal."

And then he watched the nurse leave with the last solid link he had to his wife.


	3. Chapter 3

**Close Encounters 9**

* * *

The four hours he had to wait for that phone to get back to him were a misery.

But he fought the pull of the drugs for as long as he possibly could. His eyelids felted weighted down and his chest ached with every breath. Castle gripped the railing of the hospital bed and tried to use that sensation to focus his mind, but it was going.

It was all going.

Before his time was up, Castle had sunk into sleep.

* * *

"Mr Smith. Mr Smith."

A voice called, drew him inexorably out on a long, unraveling thread.

"Mr Smith, I have your phone."

Castle groaned and his eyes crashed open, his heart pounding too hard and sluggish in its efforts, making his limbs flails and his mouth thick. He stared up at the woman standing over him.

"Mr Smith. Your phone."

"Thank you," he rasped and reached for it, gripping hard as relief flooded through him. He sagged back against the bed, clutching the phone to his heart, and it felt like the first real step towards Kate in a long journey of backsliding.

"Yeah. No problem. Let me check your temp and blood pressure and then I'll get out of here."

"Blood pressure's gonna scare you," he said, voice raw. He had to close his eyes but she laughed a little, quietly, and her hand patted his elbow.

"Don't worry. I can take it."

But everything else receded as he laid there and struggled to orient himself, his hand around the phone. He could call now - he would call. He'd find out the truth.

Maybe he could - maybe it was as simple as his father whisking him away and hiding him and all he would have to do is call Beckett's number and she'd answer. She'd answer and be looking for him too and he could tell her where he was and it would be fine.

Maybe it could be that easy.

Please let it be that easy.

* * *

He sat up in bed as best he could, using the toggle switch at the bedside railing to elevate the head. His blood moved strangely in his body as his torso raised, and he had to swallow down a bout of nausea.

Not good. Not good at all.

He pressed his eyes closed a second, waited until the bed was fully raised before he tried to move again. The waves of dizziness receded slowly, but he opened his eyes and fumbled in his pillow for where he'd hidden the phone once more.

Castle curled his hand around it and fished it out, his mouth going dry as he unlocked the screen with his passcode, waited that interminable half-second where the whole thing went black before it came up with... an open application.

Wait a second.

It was the notepad.

A note. Even as he scanned the words without even _seeing _them, he caught the tail end of the last of the message: _I love you_.

And he knew. He knew.

Kate.

His vision flared bright with relief, that flashing white behind his eyes that made it impossible, for a moment, to even see the words clearly, let alone read and comprehend, but he gulped down air and stared at the screen until his vision swam.

It was going to be fine. It was fine. She was a damn smart woman and she'd seen how fucking crazy and untrustworthy his father was and she'd gotten him a message.

Thank God.

Castle gripped the phone tighter and rubbed a hand over his eyes, pushing on his sockets to burst the bubble of pain, let it erupt over him and trickle down his spine and dissolve away.

This time when he looked, he could read every word.

_You're going to be fine. He's going to take you in the chopper and you'll make it. I'm on foot, banged up a little, but nothing like you. I know you'll make it. I'll double back to the car and head for the Kazakh border; I'll meet you in Rome, sweetheart._

_No matter what happens, I love you._

Castle stared at the message, everything still, everything silent, the world narrowed down to nothing.

She was _what?_

On _foot_ in Russia near a fucking underground nuclear arms laboratory being shelled by _mortars_. Banged up? What did that even mean? How could she-

His hand shook; he felt the restlessness burn through his legs and he was already scrabbling at the velcro straps around his knees, tossing them away. Feet next, the urgency flaming through him so that he barely felt the sick lurch of his guts as he moved.

Kate. Banged up a little - fuck, the way she'd repeated 'you'll make it' like she thought exactly the opposite about _herself_ and what did _I'll meet you in Rome_ even mean? What did that mean? How the fuck did she think she was getting to Rome? The place they'd _married_, like it was some ideal, some beautiful memory that she'd hang on to while-

His hands shook against the velcro; it wouldn't peel up. His leg burned fiercely where he was bent at the waist trying to reach, and he felt the bile rise in his throat, turned and spat out on the floor to clear his mouth. He grunted and lunged for his ankles again.

She wasn't right, hadn't been right when she wrote that message. Was it fucking code? Was she - her head. Had she - like him, had she hit her head? The message seemed out of it, wrong, _defeatist_ but as if she was trying to talk herself out of it. She was going back for the car and heading for the Kazakhstan border like they'd discussed, but the whole place had been erupting in mortar shells, and _what the fuck was wrong with these damn restraints?_

He groaned and listed over the side of the bed, felt the vomit rise violently and heaved with it, burning his throat and his nose, stinging his eyes. Not good. He had to get out of here. He had to _go._

Kate Beckett had put him on that chopper alone and she'd watched his father fly off with him.

And what? What was the rest of that story? She'd told him less than nothing in that damn note on his phone, only that she had been alive and she had shoved him to safety at her own expense.

God damn it, he wanted to throttle her for it.

He had to fucking find her first.

Had to get out of his damn, god-forsaken hospital and _get to Kate._

* * *

Beckett leaned her shoulder against the rock wall and closed her eyes, felt the earth buck as it tried to throw her off, spinning and dizzying. Her knee knocked into the stone and the pain brought a moment's sharp concentration, her hand gripping the edge of the rock shelf even as her body dragged towards the ground.

She had to stay standing. Had to. Had to. Had to move farther back into the cave, had to _go_.

She could hear them outside still, close, sporadic gunfire and angry commands. The Russian Army's plans were seriously fucked up by the CIA's incursion, and they were so not happy.

Well, neither was Beckett.

She growled and shoved herself off the rock, tried to make her feet quiet as she moved. She hoped being partially underground would shield her from the radiation, _was there radiation?,_ but after the drone strike, she held out little hope that the plutonium detonating hadn't scrambled her up somehow.

Fuck, it was pretty much a damn disaster out here and this had been exactly what she was trying to avoid when she'd made Castle go down into that facility. Why the Russian Army weren't wearing radiation suits just confounded her, but she held on to the slim hope that they'd checked and found the area clear.

Beckett had moved away from the underground facility, of course; she'd headed immediately south for the border, but the army had been on top of her before she'd gotten very far. Probably had seen the lightcraft chopper make its struggling exit.

Castle had made it. That's what she kept close.

Castle had made it out.

His father might have no qualms about leaving _her_ to die, but he'd fucking murder anyone who got in the way of saving Castle.

Castle had made it.

And fuck if she didn't hold on to some stupid, childish hope that he'd come find her. That he'd know and he'd swoop down and save her.

He'd always saved her so far.

But really, Beckett, this was asking a little much.

* * *

Castle grunted as he finally got the velcro straps ripped apart, felt his body freefalling towards empty space.

He didn't manage to catch himself.

Hitting the floor felt like an elephant had stomped him flat and he laid there for a second, realized that his other leg was still strapped into the damn bed and was twisted up.

Fuck.

He groaned and opened his eyes, flipped onto his back and panted through the agony that crawled up his thigh and into his groin. Not good. Not good. Had to get up.

Had to.

Castle drew his injured leg carefully into his chest, slowly, and realized he was bleeding. Somewhere. How had he already caused this much damage just getting out of bed?

Oh, the IV had pulled out. Well, fuck it.

Castle got his ass on the floor and then gripped the bed railing and tried to haul himself to his foot. His leg spasmed and twitched but held, thank fuck, and he swayed there on one foot, breath burning in his lungs.

His other ankle was still strapped so he eased a hip onto the mattress and had to balance with his hand still clutching the bedrail.

His palms were slick with sweat - the sick kind, not the fear kind - and his head was pulsing in time to the light behind his eyes. He lifted a shaky arm for his bound ankle and realized, quite suddenly, just how impossible this might be.

He might not get out of here.

* * *

She swayed against the push of her own feet, but she dragged the bag with her down the cave tunnel towards the spot she'd claimed nearly five days ago. Five? Six? She was starting to lose track.

Once she'd realized that she couldn't possibly outrun the Russian Army - they were still stomping around the underground facility - she'd had to hide like a fucking rabbit. It irritated her to no end that she couldn't breach their perimeter, but she was still dizzy with what had to be a concussion and she had barely found a place to hole up.

She had to fucking move though. She had to get moving soon. She wouldn't last much longer.

The cold-steppe of the Russian countryside wasn't particularly conducive to camping out.

Beckett cradled her arm against her chest and crouched down to make it through the narrowing tunnel, dragging the bag behind her. Bag? It was made up of the remnant of her radiation suit which she'd fashioned into a game bag.

Not that she caught much game. This time it was a mouse, which made her already cramped stomach twist painfully, but it was better than nothing.

Nothing had been yesterday and the day before and the day before and... however long she'd been here now, hiding like a mouse herself.

She needed to leave, but she just didn't have the strength. Since that first night, when she'd found this place and fallen unconscious for the next twenty hours or so, the nights had been so brutally cold that whatever strength or health she'd managed to gather had been sapped right out of her by morning's light.

A fucking mouse.

Was she hungry enough to eat it?

Her stomach churned at the thought. She had a nice collection of grasses and she'd stripped the bark off a grove of stunted trees she'd found near the meager river, but even though she'd been caught out in the open as wolves had attacked a diseased antelope, she'd not been close to protein in days.

She'd have to. She needed it. She had to get out of here.

At just that moment, a burst of scattered gunfire dropped her to her knees and she hit the rock hard, wincing. It was dark, so very black down the cave tunnel, and she pressed her palm to the wall to steady herself, trying to get heart rate back under control. They couldn't see her down here; they didn't know she was here; she was safe.

She heard her own harsh breathing, her head swimming, and she had to lean against the side of the tunnel to keep from passing out.

The gunfire stopped, and the strange acoustics of the cave's walls and ceiling brought the Army's words clearly to her, just as she imagined it would carry the frantic sound of her own heart back to them.

Shouted commands - that same damn commander that had been tracking her for days now - and then an argument and they were moving away.

But Beckett found that now that she was on her knees, she couldn't get back up again.

* * *

His head was swimming. Everything had receded down a tunnel of white light that was so intense he was going to vomit again.

But he had his leg free.

Castle hung on to the bedside railing with both hands, his feet still somehow not quite under him, and he fought back the wave of nausea that pulsed in time to the light. He knew, somewhere, that the pain was pretty intense, but it wasn't getting processed correctly by his brain.

He'd take it.

When his legs firmed up and seemed to hold, he released one hand and took a shallow breath, smelled his own vomit on the bedsheets - and his fear. For Beckett, for not being there when she needed him, clearly needed him, and for how severely limited his capabilities seemed to be right now.

He had to at least get out of this hospital, away from Black.

And then he realized he'd dropped the phone.

Panic coursed through him and made his blood pound too hard; the agony multiplied and burst across his vision like stars.

He groaned, pitching forward, but someone caught him.

"Oof. I said not on my shift, didn't I? Wasn't that the deal?" The nurse was breathless and only giving him a controlled descent to the floor, but it helped.

Castle laid on his back with his eyes open but not seeing, the pain so crippling that it stole his voice. He twisted his head to one side to escape the white and suddenly he saw the phone, tumbled under the bed, just beyond him.

He heard the nurse calling for someone else, probably his damn father - it was probably already over - but he dragged his arm along the floor and stretched out his fingers and could just - could just barely touch - he almost had it. Almost-

"Oh, did the phone drop? Mr Smith," she sighed. "I could have picked it up for you. All you had to do was call. Here."

She was scooping it up and pressing it into his hand and the hard pound of his heart seemed to ease a fraction, letting up on the light, giving him back a little more vision.

"Thanks," he rasped and curled his fingers around the phone and drew his fist into his chest, panting.

She sighed at him, something that sounded more pitying than helpful, even as she stripped the sheets off the bed. From the floor, Castle saw the door open again and a male nurse come inside the room, clean sheets in his hands and a stern, German look on his face. But not his father.

The relief cascaded through him like the drugs themselves, and Castle closed his eyes as the male nurse hefted him up into a chair and perched him there until the bed was made with fresh sheets.

The phone was clutched against his chest and he focused on breathing and paying attention, tried not to make more work for either of them, tried only to plan.

If he could stay with it long enough, he could sweet talk his way into getting the restraints removed, _see what happens when I'm left to myself, wink wink_.

He stood on his own two feet when the bed was ready, his fingers clammy around the phone, and he went meekly - or pretended it at least. Beckett didn't have time for this kind of shit, but he'd play along to get them to leave him alone.

The blonde male nurse wasn't needed - Castle took pride in getting his own ass up on that mattress, and he used his upper body strength to position himself against the raised head of the bed. He ignored the white that flashed behind his eyes, the associated agony that stabbed so deep it felt like it dwelled in his spine, and he gave the night duty nurse a wan smile.

"Thanks," he said again.

"Phone's not broken, is it? Bouncing off the floor."

A moment's panic took him, but he checked quickly and it flashed with the lock screen - which was a photo he'd taken of the pale line of her chin and her lips in a smile, illuminated by the sun through the window in their own bedroom at home.

He missed home. Kate. The feel of her body in the bed next to him, her humming kiss as he woke her. He missed coming in the door and the gold and amber and green that spilled in from the decorative stained glass, the dog right there and nosing into his palm, the _hope_ that was housed in that place with her.

He lit up the screen again, one more time, just to see that smile.

"Oh, is that your wife?" the woman murmured. "I'll let you get back to your phone call. I know she'll want to hear from you."

He stared down at the phone and felt all his words choked up in his throat. Instead he nodded and put in his passcode.

He did have a call to make. In his rush to get out of here, he'd forgotten.

Mitchell was going to damn well answer some questions.

* * *

In the end, she couldn't do it.

Beckett kept the bag as far from her as she could, tried not to think about the dead rodent inside, and swallowed down a mouthful of water. She'd fashioned a canteen out of some twisted metal; it worked like the top to a thermos, but she figured it'd been some fitting for a missile or small arms, something fucking dangerous and probably radioactive by now, right? But she had to have water. And it'd kept her alive.

Her stomach cramped and she imagined she could smell the little carcass freezing up already, stiffening, and inedible as the temperature steadily dropped. She curled deeper into the darkness, imagined it was a blanket, a living warmth. She let her body sink down against the rock floor of the cave and imagined the heat, the warmth, a bed and sheets-

Her brain didn't seem able to turn off.

Imagine, imagine, imagine.

If she was fucking fantasizing now - imagining shit without her own conscious thought - then she was going to damn well fantasize about Rick Castle.

And his body over hers, and how strong he was, how he covered her, his mouth and his hands, and how he'd turn them so she was on top, lying on the pillow of his chest, cradled by his hips, and how he'd love her, how he loved her, how-

Fuck.

Not a good idea.

She opened her eyes to the severe black of the cave, but the bad thing about hiding out in a lightless cave was how the unrelenting darkness made the perfect canvas for her brain's imagination.

She could still see him. Castle.

Still smell him and feel him, still breathe him in and have his arms wrap around her, and it broke her.

She was breaking.

Kate pressed her face into her elbow and let the tears leak out even though it was so stupid, she'd get dehydrated before the sun could rise; she'd cry herself to sleep and if she did that, it was so cold at night she might not wake.

But she couldn't stop the slow drain of tears.


	4. Chapter 4

**Close Encounters 9**

* * *

Castle woke in the darkness to tears on his face and grief pressing him down so darkly he thought - for a moment - it had happened.

She was gone.

But no. No; he breathed and his breath came, and no.

She was alive. She was alive. He was certain of it.

He had to get out of here. Mitchell hadn't answered his phone, which wasn't a good sign, and he'd sent a quick message telling Mitch to call him directly, not contact his father, but there really wasn't time to wait.

He hadn't meant to fall asleep. That trip over the side of the bed had taken more out of him than he'd realized. In fact, he wasn't entirely sure he'd finished that text message to Mitchell, and so he unlocked the phone once more and blinked hard to concentrate.

His cheeks were wet and so he scraped a hand over his face, rubbed his eyes into his shoulder and realized - damn it - how far was he going to get in a hospital gown?

Okay, he needed a plan. Think it through for half a second before he tripped on his ass out of bed again.

The restraints were off - that was in his favor. The meds had been dialed back a notch and so while the nausea remained, he was starting to think it wasn't entirely due to being doped up.

Could be the severity of the pain in his head.

Forget it. It wasn't crippling. The white in his eyes didn't keep his legs from working.

And the wound? It was bandaged, the stitches were set, he knew putting too much weight on it would be a bad idea, but he could baby it a bit. He could work around it.

He just needed out from under his father's scrutiny, Black's machinations. He needed Mitchell to fucking call him-

Wait. Don't panic. Just think.

Night nurse went off duty in - oh, already off, according to the time on his phone. Fine. That morning bitch would have already come in to check on him and so he probably had two more hours. She must not have seen that his restraints were off, or else she would've strapped him back in, so he couldn't linger. He didn't know how long his luck would last.

Castle pushed his fists under him once more and slid slowly off the side of the bed, feet dangling.

He felt the tremors start in his thighs first, his arms next, like he'd not eaten in-

Oh. Solid food? Had he. . .

No idea.

Well, first on his list then. Solid food intake when he was well clear of his room. Good, okay. Food and then the hospital gown. Attainable goals.

He clutched the phone and eased his weight onto his uninjured leg, let himself get used to it this time before he put his other foot to the floor. So far, so good. A little shaky, but he just needed some food.

He shuffled forward this time, not trying to do anything too strenuous, taking his time. He kept the phone close to his chest and licked his lips, blinking past the burst of white that flashed in his eyes like the round ring of a spotlight.

He closed his eyes to ignore and kept going, feeling his way, one slow slide of his foot after another, taking shallow breaths as his lungs worked to expand.

Castle felt himself swaying, but he refused. He absolutely refused. She needed him. She fucking needed him, and he was not letting her down.

When he opened his eyes, he was at the door.

* * *

He could be dead.

Beckett didn't want to think like that, but the blood had been everywhere.

She dreamed about the blood. She woke to darkness so complete that nothing could get rid of the vivid, overbright images of his blood against his pants, drenching her hands, soaking into the ground. She saw him dying.

She didn't want him to be dead.

The idea that his father would do absolutely anything to prevent that from happening - the crazed man would _surely_ keep Castle alive no matter what - that's what got her up in the morning when her heart was ripped to shreds and her vision was stained with blood and her body was frozen down to her bones.

His fucking _father_ gave her hope.

Madness.

But she got to her hands and knees, blinded by the cave's darkness, and dizzy with fatigue and hunger, and then she shuffled forward slowly, heading to the mouth of the cave once more, heading for the light and water and maybe - possibly - something to eat today.

* * *

He would find her. He would find her. Beckett. That's all there was to it.

He would find her.

The hallway was deserted, lit with the fluorescents that whined and buzzed and made his head pound. He eased out of the doorway and leaned against the wall for a moment, taking stock.

If his father wasn't hovering outside his door, then where was he?

And then it occurred to him - with Castle and Beckett both out of the way, there was something of a power vacuum now. Shit, his father moved fast. No wonder Mitchell hadn't called him or messaged him back. Mitchell had known of his father, would accept Black's position as lead agent in this until Castle was back on his feet. Which meant that Castle himself was probably off-limits according to his father's orders.

Well, Castle was on his own then. He pushed farther down the hall, doggedly moving despite the drag on his feet, the heaviness in his limbs.

His father. He should've known better than to think the man would retire. No going quietly, not for Black, not when so much was at stake. Castle wished he'd murdered the man when he'd found him pointing a gun to his wife's head.

His wife. Fuck. Kate was out there alone and if it was up to Black, no one had gone back for her. No one.

She only had him for back up.

Oh, shit. He was going to fall down.

Castle put a hand to the wall and closed his eyes, battling back the tight fist of agony that was ever present. His shoulder bounced off a door frame and he opened his eyes, realized he was at an empty hospital room.

Just a moment. He'd just - stay right here a second. Everything was spinning, his head was killing him.

Castle rolled inside and leaned against the wall, blinking through it until he had the energy to shut the door after him.

He felt his knees starting to give out, but no. No. He couldn't sit down.

If he sat down, he wasn't sure he could get back up again.

* * *

She paused at the mouth of the cave and listened, realized her eyes were closed and had been through her whole trek. Not like there was anything to see, not with the way the darkness was so complete.

But the scary part was not having the energy to open her eyes.

She rested just inside, listening, listening; she had to be sure they'd moved on. Had to be sure.

Sometimes she dreamed about being captured.

It meant one of two equally attractive things:

food.

or

a bullet to the head.

Either way, either way-

_No._

She opened her eyes.

It was still that grey pre-dawn, the washout of the landscape and the hazy forms of stunted trees, the dry riverbed. The sounds of night animals coming home, settling in. The Army would be at base camp about fifty miles north of here and she was awake now. Alive. Her body was a hot mess and her stomach was a tight, scrabbling fist, and her head still throbbed so much she threw up when she drank too fast, and _God,_ this was worse than just-

_No. Don't._

She wouldn't. She wouldn't. Promise. Promise, Castle, I won't.

Beckett lifted her head from the rock and pushed her hands through the clump of vegetation that hid her hole in the ground. She wriggled up and out, smeared through dirt and rock, birthed into the pale lick of morning.

Water first.

And then-

* * *

Was he awake? He couldn't even. He couldn't-

He fucking well _better_.

Keep moving. This was not the time to fade out.

He was clutching the scrub pants and attempting to lift his leg into the hole and fuck if it didn't keep moving on him.

No one else. There was absolutely no one else.

Black was in control of the office and if that man had said Beckett was gone, lost, no one would go looking for her.

He would never-

God, he couldn't think about her out there right now. He had to get this damn leg into his pants and keep going forward.

Castle tilted crazily and gave in to the lure of the chair, sinking into it, head swimming as he leaned over, those white spots flaring to life behind his eyes. His hands shook as he arranged the pant leg at his foot, maneuvered it over his ankle, and then slowly up his leg.

He swallowed down the strange sensation of falling and put his palms on his knees to push himself upright once more. Everything was a struggle. He was quickly moving past pissed off and into _scared_ and he didn't like that emotion. Fear was pointless. Fear did nothing.

_Get it together, Richard._

He gritted his teeth when he realized the voice in his head was _Black's_ but if that's what it took, then damn it, fine. Fine. Fuck his life, but if his father's nastiness and cold brutality put him back on his feet right now, then let it be.

Castle was in love with Kate Beckett_,_ and she was the entire reason for any good in his worthless life, and love was going to be the fuel for this journey, but first, he had to _stand up_.

He gripped the arms of the chair and pushed, forced himself to do it, forced himself. Had to. He had to. She had no one else.

He got to his feet again, swaying hard, sick with dizziness that climbed up his throat, but he let go of the chair and clutched at the scrubs drooping at his knees. He pulled them up around his hips, catching at the hospital gown, and then he flexed his feet against the bare tile.

Now for shoes. And probably some kind of shirt. Couldn't get far on base in a hospital gown.

Jeez, how long had this taken him? Just getting on _pants_.

He had to go. He had to stop resting and he had to just push through. He'd done Afghan combat and been imbedded with the rebels for five years; he'd nearly had his hand chopped off and then been lost at sea for days; he could fucking put on clothes and walk out of here.

_I'm coming. I swear. I'm coming._

* * *

She came to.

Her cheek was pressed against the dry riverbed that snaked just past her hole in the ground cave, her limbs were crooked under her. She must've fallen again. She didn't remember it, but it'd happened before. The dizziness from the concussion or hunger, something - it sneaked up on her and dropped her.

How many days now? Seven. Eight. She'd thought five but this was - this was more. This was systemic failure. She had to get water.

If she was too weak to get water, she was too weak to get out of here when the Russians finally left her alone to lick their wounds back at the underground facility. She'd be too weak to find the car again and the glorious bounty of provision (what was it they'd had? a couple granola bars and a few water bottles and maybe a package of beef jerky because Castle was the kind of guy that always bought beef jerky at a gast station because _I might like it this time; you never know_).

She grunted and pushed off the dirt, her mouth tasting like grit and a bruise pounding painfully under her cheek.

Get up. Keep moving.

Maybe this was a bad idea. She'd holed up in the little cave because her head - the concussion - had been so bad she couldn't move another step. And because she'd been overrun by the Russians five minutes after the chopper had left and she'd run out of ammo firing back at them (at least she'd gotten the scouting party; she'd gotten them and escaped and it was okay) and she had nothing to defend herself but Castle's knife.

Which was good for killing field mice but not for starting fires to cook field mice, and raw - it was raw, she couldn't - but she had to eat something. She had to. She had to get back to their car and that meant clarity and focus to sneak around the Russians at night, and concentration only came when she had _eaten_.

It would take maybe four hours. Four hours after wandering around like an idiot with her head killing her and throwing up every few feet and then falling apart at the river and nearly drowning and choking up lungfuls of brackish, most-likely-contaminated water and then crawling into a hole to die.

Only she wasn't dead.

She would be if she didn't eat the damn mouse.

She was crawling out of a dry, dusty former channel of the slowly trickling river and it was a damn metaphor for her life right now and she had to change her circumstances. No more of this, no more passing out and dragging herself around.

She had to get back to the car.

She had to _eat_.

Water first. Then-

Then find that mouse and fucking do it already.

* * *

Castle sucked in a shallow breath and rifled through the pile of dirty laundry. He'd hold his breath if he thought he could stand it, but actually, he didn't think he could.

Needed every drop of oxygen.

It was his own soiled bedsheets he was digging through. So he told himself. That's all.

He found what he was looking for at the bottom. Scrub shirt, stained at the bottom right but dry. Not vomit at least. Blood and - well, best not think about it.

He'd stolen shoes out of the locker room - sneakers left on a top shelf that were a half-size too small but they worked. No clothes in the damn men's locker room, of course, and yet he'd found the laundry right past it.

Providence.

Castle shucked the hospital gown and tugged the shirt on over his head, smelled the sour rank of it. Fuck, not good. It'd have to do for now. He'd find something on another floor maybe. An army jacket is what he needed, but that was dicey. They were labeled with each guy's name and rank and he was hoping that Ramstein was still the maze it used to be, banking on that actually, so that no one would ask him what he was doing with their buddy's jacket.

That kind of thing.

He had a new wave of energy and he'd found a half a muffin on a styrofoam plate - probably a nurse's leftovers. That had done him some good. He needed more, and he needed to be faster, but he thought there might be light at the end of this tunnel.

The fear was gone. She only had him, but she had him. He was here.

Castle replaced the biohazard lid on the laundry and shoved it back into the closet-like room he'd found it in, and then he scanned the shelves. Cleaning solvent, duster, broom, a package of-

Well, fuck, pay attention, Castle.

He snagged the package and tore off the plastic, grinning to himself as he opened up the uniform shirt. Freshly laundered. Must be shipped off base and then come back in thin plastic, wrapped to keep each one clean. He ripped the soiled scrub top off his head and put on the janitor's tshirt, hanging a little loose but much better.

Yes. This was working. He was going to get out of here.

What else? What else could he use?

* * *

Wolves.

Oh, God. Oh, God, _please._

Beckett stayed crouched at the side of the river, her heart pounding too hard, her body sick with fatigue, and she stared across the water at the wolf that had come slinking up.

If the damn thing attacked her, she had no-

The knife.

She had the knife.

Beckett slipped her fingers down the side of her calf until she touched the sheath tied inexpertly against her leg. It was a struggle to slide the blade out without any sudden movements, but she worked at it slowly, rocking it back and forth until it came out.

She gripped it in her fist with her fingers sweaty and her elbows propped on the rock she'd been perched on, drinking deeply before the wolf showed up.

A wolf. He watched her.

She watched him.

If he had friends near by, she was dead.

* * *

Uh-oh. That had to be about him.

Castle could hear the whole place in a flurry of movement and he leaned against the door to the stairwell and tried not to pass out.

The muffin was wearing off.

Still, he had shoes and pants and a shirt, but he was a little shaky and his vision was tunneling again-

No, don't think about it. He could do this.

Lay low for a moment, gather his resources, and then start down the stairs like a normal guy.

* * *

She had passed out.

She woke to the wolf's muzzle at her eye level and froze, a sucked in breath that made the beast skitter backwards.

Beckett clenched her fists and felt the knife, felt it under her body and worthless that way unless she could move fast enough to defend herself. The wolf was warily watching her and after a too-long, fear-frozen second, she realized the thing was injured.

Back leg, held up against its body.

But still a wild animal. Still dangerous. Still would probably attack rather than leave her alone.

She never thought she'd _miss_ her own damn dog. So fiercely. If she had Sasha out here-

Well, no. A terrible thought. And the wolf-

It came at her then and she cried out, jerking her arm up to defend herself. Her shout had startled it, but the teeth flashed and snapped at her raised arm, barely missing. Adrenaline pushed Beckett onto her back to defend herself, legs curling in, knife scraping against rock as she used her left arm to block the wolf's second feint.

It was trying to scare her. It was wounded too and it was trying to assert its dominance and Beckett was on her back with her throat exposed and damn it-

The wolf lunged again, the big body landing over her and knocking the wind out of her, breath not coming, the rancid smell of festering wound like a taste in her mouth. Beckett dragged her knife hand up and brought the blade into the hide, weak and probably ineffectual, but the thing yelped and suddenly the weight was gone, and she could breathe.

Her head was pounding and the wolf was slinking backwards through the grasses now, evidently not able to take her on, full retreat.

Beckett lifted up slowly from the rock and onto her knees, the knife falling out of her weak hand and clattering. She felt the sting in her side that meant she'd cut herself when she'd pulled the blade out from under her, but she didn't know what she could do about it. It was warm as it trickled down her ribs but it was stopping already.

She trembled and squatted there until the black in her vision resolved into the flat, dull rock and the point of the blade dipped in blood.

She'd probably gotten the wolf's bad leg. And her arm throbbed, she realized. The teeth had grazed her.

The wolf wouldn't be far off and now that she knew they were sharing a water source, Beckett needed to leave. She'd go back to the hole, eat the damn mouse, and then she'd walk the four hours to the car and get the fuck out of here.

She could do it. She had to do it.

No choice anymore.

* * *

Castle was suddenly grateful he hadn't thought to go up the stairs, that all he was attempting was down. Because even with the aid of gravity, he was having to pace himself.

He was gripping both railings and taking the brunt of his weight on his upper torso, babying his leg, but he'd realized quickly that it wasn't about his leg. The leg would be fine. It was the head injury.

The doctors had consistently been unclear on what exactly was going on with him, the white spots behind his eyes; he vaguely remembered a vision test at one point, but he didn't recall any kind of results. Maybe that was the concussion or the force of the mortar shell explosion - maybe his brain was more scrambled than he'd thought. _Walking_ should not be such a problem; something in his head was messed up.

That was sobering. Meant he couldn't trust his own decisions, couldn't be sure of what he thought he knew to be true.

No. He knew one thing - Beckett wasn't here with him. She was out there somewhere, probably equally injured, and he was _here_ and not with her.

Unacceptable.

_Keep moving._

* * *

She washed the wounds in the river, sunk down on her knees right in the middle of the sluggish current, let the water soak into her clothes and hair, ripple over the burning agony of her arm and side and hip.

Her hip. Fuck. The stitches. She'd - forgotten. In all this, she'd forgotten about them.

Kate moved slowly as she lifted her shirt and the fleece, pushed the sweatpants down her hips a little to look. The granny panties Castle had bought for her - she'd forgotten that too. How long ago, and yet just a handful of days that stop at the convenience store after leaving Mayak.

The sharp cold of the water was bringing some clarity, the pain was keeping her there like the heaviest of anchors. Beckett let her shirt fall back down, blinked hard to keep herself from sinking farther into the water.

The wolf was gone for now, but she had no idea when it would be back. Probably didn't have his pack, probably abandoned, left for dead since it was so severely injured, but she couldn't count on the pack staying away when they smelled a wounded animal.

Could be herself she was talking about, that wounded animal.

Beckett pushed herself to her feet, shivering hard in the cold, but at least this way she'd keep alert. The canteen she'd made from the radiation suit was ripped after the wolf's attack and nearly worthless; still she filled it to the holes and slung it across her body, felt it slosh against her side. Since her clothes were soaked through, maybe she could suck the water from the material first, save the canteen for last.

Maybe.

Her hip ached, her head. Her whole body, bones, organs, eyes. Everything. Stop thinking, stop cataloging injuries and just go.

She needed to just go.

Beckett slogged out of the river, dragging herself against the weight of water, and crawled up the low bank on her hands on knees. She crouched there, shaking, shivering, water streaming down her body, and then she pushed up onto her feet.

The cave was only a few hundred yards down the streambed, where the water disappeared underground and the bank dried out, but as she stood there, swaying, sick, blackness crowding her vision, she realized it was no use.

The hole in the ground cave was the opposite direction from the car, and she wasn't sure that eating the damn, diseased-ridden mouse wouldn't do her more harm than good.

She'd just start walking.

She could do it.

* * *

At the door to the hospital's underground garage, Castle wheezed for breath, vision swimming, the white in his eyes swallowing up everything. Everything.

He grunted softly and leaned his head against the cold concrete, heard the tires screeching on a curve - not a car chasing him, just someone make a too-hasty exit. His heart was sluggish and thrashing in his throat like a wounded animal and he couldn't catch his breath.

He just - it was worse than he'd thought. But.

He needed out of here. Quickly.

Ramstein held a US community of around 53,000 people; it was a good place to get lost in. Not only that, but since it was a NATO installation, there were a host of other nations represented here as well. It was massive, and he remembered hearing that the airport terminal was completely new, as well as some other facilities.

USAF and USArmy all had squads assigned here, and the sheer size of the place was going to work to his advantage. He knew of a guy in the 435th Air Ground Operations Wing who might help him out - if he wasn't on leave or not on base right now. But still - Castle should head for the new airport terminal and its row upon row of hangars.

He'd fly a damn plane out of here if that's what it took.

Castle slipped out of the door and into the parking garage, all his concentration on acting normally, being cool. He felt the quiver of exhaustion in his thighs and ignored it, kept his eyes fixed on the ground exit. He heard another squeal of wheels on concrete but the guy was already past him and gone.

Probably no one thought he'd make it this far. Honestly, he wasn't sure how he'd done it himself.

A plane. He focused on that. As far as plans went, he wasn't certain, because his field of vision was so limited by these sudden whiteouts of pain, and the kind of aircraft he'd take up would be instrument flying of course, and he'd have to have a clear horizon line.

He'd have to be able to _see_, damn it. And right now that was iffy.

Castle shivered in the sudden cool wind that blasted through the ground floor space. He took the sloping pavement of the exit at a slow walk, forcing his thighs to work, blanking out the throb of his pulse in his wound.

Whatever inconveniences he suffered, hers were probably greater, injured and alone in Russia.

Castle pushed out into the light of the clear morning and stood for a second, swaying, trying to breathe, and then he realized with a jolt of idiotic panic that a whole fleet of cars awaited him at his very back.

And he had fucking _walked_.

Damn it.

Castle turned back around, nostrils flaring, and went to go steal a car.

* * *

Assuming she could survive four hours of walking might have been... a little generous to herself. Beckett was having trouble keeping her balance; every rock under her foot tilted her towards the ground, and every scrub brush caught at her ankles. She found herself on her hands and knees again and took a deep breath in, tried to remember _falling_.

She must be blacking out.

Once in college Kate and a friend had headed up to this deli place on a Saturday morning, one of the first days of sun, a cool touch to the air. Before that long trek, Beckett had woken up late and hadn't eaten anything and then she and the girl, was it Karen?, had sat in the laundrymat for a few hours doing a couple loads. Sweat pooling, tshirt sticking to her, the brisk breeze against her cheeks, Kate had walked the fifteen blocks towards the best deli place on the West Coast - so Karen claimed - the two of them laughing and talking.

When they'd gotten in the door of the deli, the flux of body heat inside and the cold sunlight outside and the humid laundrymat still in her lungs had made Beckett nearly faint.

Not eating, the heat, the long walk - she'd been standing in line and suddenly she was leaning up against the glass partition, everything black and dim but still conscious.

She felt like that now. No food, long walk, and this weird shift of temperature - overheated but cold, shivering but sweat dripping down her back.

She was passing out again, even as she tried to stand.

Beckett growled through it just to have some noise break up the monotony, just to hear her own voice, and the rasp of her throat made her - suddenly - afraid.

She was alone. She was truly alone and in the middle of Russia and she hadn't even called her dad last week to say hi, to say _I love you_, to remind him that they were all getting together at their house for Memorial Day in a month so stock up on fish because Castle had wanted to try to grill. He'd never had a cookout before.

Shit.

She'd never gotten justice for her mother. Bracken was still playing his political games in New York and when Kate had started on with the CIA, she'd managed to curtail some of his power but she'd had to compromise on justice. She'd saved their lives to do it, but her mother's killer was free and out there and now he always would be.

Beckett got to her feet, swayed even as the ground tried to meet her. She clung to her balance, gritted her teeth to keep herself upright, and pushed forward. If she kept going, her momentum would drive her on.

More than Bracken, her father, her mother, more than missed Memorial Day at the house, more than being alone in Russia, there was Castle.

He wanted to grill out, he wanted to invite their friends over. This man she loved had built these wild, hope-filled dreams with her, but if she didn't keep moving, that man would be dust, crushed under the weight of grief, the weight of absence, of not-having. Abandonment.

Kate grit her teeth and resolutely kept going, ignored the pitch and sway of the earth, ignored the burn of her hip and her side and the throb of teeth marks in her arm, ignored the desperate shivering heat that was freezing her bones and catching her on fire.

She was not leaving Castle alone. She was not leaving him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Close Encounters 9**

* * *

Castle drove slowly, carefully, kept blinking his eyes to make sure his vision was clear. The roads on base were well-marked and avidly maintained, so he didn't have to combat potholes or much construction. He'd been here a few times before and he knew his way around the main center, but the hospital had never been on his tour.

Ah, but look at that. Sign for the airport.

Castle followed the the signs, gritting his teeth to keep himself with it. He knew now that he was worse off than he'd thought initially. Sitting down in the car had let his body finally feel it - all of it - and the dump of adrenaline had worn off and left him shaky, disoriented, sweating.

He'd find something to eat in the airport. He vaguely remembered food service vendors inside, and it was newly remodeled anyway, so he expected to find at least a fast food place. His stomach lurched at the idea, but it was better than nothing. Whatever energy that muffin had given him had long since worn off.

An ambulance with its lights approached, heading back for the hospital, and Castle kept his hands on the wheel, kept his eyes on the road. The bus passed him and went on and he let out a breath. He'd heard some commotion when he'd gotten the car started, but he had no idea about what.

Castle could only assume the morning nurse had found him missing and raised the alarm. His father would be looking for him, but he was counting on Black ascribing him a little more rationality. He'd post guards at the gates, then check Castle's former base housing, probably the men's barracks, and finally food places.

Black would never expect him to want to fly out. It was a crazy and foolish idea. But he couldn't let his father trap him here; he couldn't stay caged.

He needed Mitchell to call him back. He needed information and probably some help.

His guy at the 435th would help. What was his name? Rico. That's right. Rico. The guy had been in service since he was seventeen, escaping a homeless mother and a dad in prison. He'd been attached to Castle's hip when he was here, following him around like a little brother, a little starry-eyed. Rico would help; Rico would get him a plane.

Castle took the exit for the airport and followed the directions for the hangar space rather than the terminal. He clenched his fists on the wheel and then lifted a hand to wipe the sweat off his forehead.

He didn't feel so good.

Shit. The white spots were back, the edges blurring together so that the pain behind his eyes was like a solar flare.

Castle blinked furiously and found the parking lot, slid the stolen vehicle into a spot between two SUVs to keep the car partially hidden. His heart was pounding again; a rush of blood through his thighs made his wound feel alive and his groin twist achingly.

Castle leaned his forehead against the steering wheel and took a moment to breathe.

* * *

Beckett wanted to stop. She wanted to lie down and sleep. Just sleep.

But she couldn't. She could _not_ stop.

There was no cover out here, the sun had come up blazingly at her back, and her clothes, even though soaking wet, were beginning to chafe as they dried. She sucked at the sleeve of her fleece, dirty or not, and swallowed down another mouthful of water.

Her stomach twisted.

Beckett stumbled, felt her knee - that bad knee - lock and seize again, but it kept her upright long enough to regain her balance. A throbbing knee was nothing compared to everything else and so she planted her foot purposefully and gritted her teeth through the flare up.

Beckett lifted her eyes to her surroundings once more, catalogued the features. She had to keep aware, had to constantly check.

She had assumed she'd recognize the terrain when she got to where they'd hidden the car, but the last few hours everything had looked the same. Endless rock bordered by scrub grass and the occasional stunted tree growing where a portion of the river reappeared again.

When they'd started out on this thing, Castle had driven the company car out of Black's base of operations and they'd approached the underground facility from the west. They'd gotten within ten miles of their target before they'd had to hide it. Beckett, in her dash from the Russian Army, had gone farther east and south than she'd meant to, and it meant she had to make a loop back west to find the vehicle.

If she was right. The map was mental and her location approximate, but she was pretty damn good at this kind of thing. Castle had called her what? A... homing pigeon. She could do this. She'd find it again - she had to; that car was her salvation.

Kate breathed through the rebellious weakening of her body and she kept moving west, avoiding the northern stretches where the scrub grass ended and the rock began. Even though the rock made for better hiding places should the Army come upon her, it would also lead her straight back to them, and it would take her too off course if she strayed.

She trudged through the scrub, let the twisted talons of its dried up fingers clutch at her sweat pants, and she tried not to think about how needle in a haystack this trek really was.

She had no other choice.

If she didn't get some supplies, she was going to die out here.

* * *

Castle startled awake with his heart pounding too hard and his limbs flailing. He grunted in pain as his wrist smacked the car door but it drove a sharp wedge of alertness into his brain, got him going again.

He'd passed out in the car.

Time to go. Had to go. He did her no good like this.

Castle cracked open the stolen vehicle's door and fumbled his way out, his legs shaky and limp even as he used the roof of the car to haul himself upright. He swayed there a minute, let the burn of sun-warm metal press into his skin, and then he stood.

Okay. All right. He could do this.

Castle shifted forward, easing into the movement of walking, and found he could do it. He could make it. He probably looked decrepit but he was moving.

Rico would set him up. Rico would understand.

Castle kept his eyes on the nearest hangar and shuffled across the short stretch of parking lot, moving like his feet were melting to the pavement. The morning sun was now high overhead - how long had he been passed out? - and the base was alert and moving, the sounds and sights of an operational city.

And then the phone rang.

The phone. He startled and slammed his hip against a parked car in surprise, looked down at the ringing thing in his hand. He answered automatically, not even processing the ID.

"Castle," he muttered.

"Castle. Shit. What the fuck are you doing?"

"Mitchell?" he asked, gripped the hood of a nearby car to keep upright. "Mitchell, I need your help."

"Where _are_ you?"

"I'm-" And something stopped him. It was like a hand over his mouth, a fist shoved down his throat and choking him. He actually couldn't say the words.

"Your father is looking everywhere - you are seriously messed up, right now, Castle. Do you even realize-"

"Where's Beckett?" he got out instead.

"You need to get back in that damn hospital bed. Castle. Come on."

"Where's Beckett?"

"Castle."

"You _tell me_ where she is. No one will give me a straight answer." He swayed against the car but he had to keep moving. They'd track this number, wouldn't they? At this very moment, they knew his GPS, knew he had this phone.

Mitchell did at least. And he couldn't be sure that his father didn't as well. What Mitchell knew, Black had to know. Surely.

"Castle," the man said quietly.

"Just tell me. I just - I have to know what happened," he scraped out.

He didn't stop moving; he didn't stop. No matter what Mitchell told him, he couldn't trust it. He trusted his gut, he trusted the note she left on this phone, he trusted _Kate_.

She was alive. She'd been alive; she was alive.

"Beckett called me after the mortar shell; she needed a passenger pick up. You were bad off - from the medics report, there was-

"I don't care about me. I care about her. Tell me about her."

"I don't know, man. I didn't see her. Black flew the lightcraft and when he came back, you were stuffed into the cargo area in back."

"Stuffed."

"I guess Beckett helped. I don't know. I swear. He had the plutonium and you guys had uploaded the locations, and we were in the middle of a firefight with the fucking Russian Army and our whole ground crew was wiped out-"

"Wait. Wait. What?" He felt himself swaying towards the ground but he couldn't. He couldn't. He kept moving for that hangar like a mirage on a desert. "Mitchell. The ground team who came in behind us-"

"Didn't you hear? It was an underground weapons plant for the fucking Russian Army. They were doing it themselves. We stumbled right into the middle of things and the Army came out in force, man. The mortar fire, the-"

"The whole team?" he said, a gnawing starting up in his guts. "The ground team. Everyone."

"Everyone. Gone."

"Shit. But Beckett."

"I don't know. She's - I don't know. Black went back looking for her. He didn't find her."

"Of course he didn't," he growled out. "Fucking hell." He slogged through the flash of bright pain behind his eyes, the white that made him temporary blind. "Mitchell. I've got to go back for her."

"You can't do that, man."

"I have to."

"Look, sit tight. Wherever you are. I'll come to you, we'll figure this out together."

"So you've traced me," he said hollowly. "Fuck."

Castle ended the call and dropped the phone to the pavement to smash it, but he couldn't. He couldn't.

Her message was on that phone.

* * *

It came to her suddenly that the skittering of rock she'd heard over the last few miles was - actually - the wolf.

Shit.

The wolf.

The wounded thing. But still. It was tracking her.

Kate glanced carefully out of the side of her eyes and tried to see it, catch even a glimpse, but it was keeping back. Well back. She had no idea how fast it could be with that wounded leg, but damn it - not like Beckett could speed walk here.

Would it attack if she went down? Was it waiting for her to falter, to show herself as the weaker animal?

She was easy kill and it had to be as starving as she was. _Too bad, Wolf; I haven't eaten in days. It's lean and stringy meat and probably filled with parasites. Not to mention irradiated._

She stumbled at a misstep and gasped as her knee buckled, completely taken by surprise by her body's breakdown (though why? why exactly was she surprised at how damn weak she was?). Beckett growled and clutched a handful of grass, got back on her feet again.

Well, that was one way to test out her theory. Wolf hadn't jumped her, or she had just managed to get upright before he could make his move.

She darted her eyes around, searching for the thing, wondering where he was and how tasty she might look. But she had to keep moving, had to keep walking. If she stopped to assess, she'd never get going again.

Silver lining - there was no way she could stop now, no matter how alluring it might be to stop and rest. Wolf would get her. Only thing to do was keep going, find the damn car.

Well. She had a companion for the journey then, and a way to keep herself sharp.

* * *

He was fucking moron. He should've smashed the phone.

Castle saw the dun-colored jeeps skidding towards the hangar, bristling with MPs, but he didn't stop. He couldn't stop. He needed a plane. It was right there. The hangar door was open and the little two-seater was a beauty, a perfect angel, and he could take it and go and no one had to worry, no one had to make a fuss. He'd just go get Kate; he just needed to go get Kate.

His chest twisted when the military police jumped down from the back of the jeep, all the men in their crisp uniforms and their polished guns, but he kept walking.

They formed a line, a wall between him and that gorgeous little plane, but he couldn't stop. He couldn't. Kate was just beyond those MPs, Kate was out there. He had to get to her.

"Captain Castle."

Captain? Really. Fuck his father for these damn mind games. Like saying he was a captain would improve this situation.

"Sir, you have to stop. We can't let you go AWOL."

There was respect in the MP's tone, a grudging sense of duty, just the perfect diplomat, really. He'd go far. But Castle kept walking.

"Sir, we've been ordered to stop you."

"Any means necessary?" Castle bit out, not really asking. He'd walk until they knocked him to the ground and then he'd fucking crawl until they smashed his hands and cuffed him and dragged him back.

Because he wouldn't go back.

And then another jeep screamed up to the line and a guy in civvies was jumping out, tie flapping in the wake of the vehicle, and it was Mitchell.

"Rick. Come on."

"No one calls me that," he ground out. "No one but Beckett. Move out of my way, Mitchell."

"Castle," he said, holding two hands up as they met on the tarmac. Castle kept going, pushed past him, and the MPs stirred but didn't raise their weapons.

"You have no idea what's going on here," Castle growled.

"Then stop and tell me. Tell me, Agent Castle, because I have never in my life seen you do something so very very stupid."

Castle leveled a glittering glare on his former friend and co-worker. "Then let me go."

"I can't do that."

"I'm in charge of Eastern Europe," Castle said calmly, though his hands jittered and his legs twitched as he kept walking. He felt the thrashing pain in his groin now with every step and the white behind his eyes made it hard to pinpoint how long the line of MPs was.

"You're injured. You've had a massive concussion that has caused some brain damage-"

"Well, fuck, it's not brain damage that Beckett's not here," he snapped back.

"But this is. What were you planning to do? Steal a fucking plane?"

"Liberate."

"Listen to yourself. You've been hit on the head, torn up with shrapnel, and you just recovered from a severe case of blood poisoning in which _everyone_ said to cut off the leg but your father wouldn't let them. We thought you were going to die."

"I'm not dead. Beckett's not dead. I have to-"

Mitchell put up both hands and pushed him back. "Give me a chance, here, man. Give me a _shot_ at finding-"

"You? You left her for dead," Castle growled, pushing forward only to find that he had no strength. No leverage. Nothing in his muscles.

Mitchell pushed on his shoulders and Castle felt himself propelled backwards, _away_ from where he needed to be. He had to get that plane; he had to. Mitch pushed him back again, so Castle smashed his fist into Mitchell's gut and they both went down. Mitchell grunted and slammed Castle onto his back; the air exploded from his lungs and he groaned.

"Damn it. Don't make me hurt you," Mitchell panted over him, getting to one knee. "Give me a chance to look for Beckett while you fucking _heal_. You can't do this."

"I need to get Beckett; I can't leave her out there-"

"Let me look," Mitchell said. "Let me look. I'll go right now if you go back with the MPs. I'll take this damn plane right here and look for her, but you _have_ to go back to the hospital."

Castle couldn't breathe. Mitchell's hand was on his chest holding him down and it was like a fucking anvil had been dropped on him. An elephant. He had to get Beckett. He had go back for her. "I can't leave her out there."

"Fuck, Castle, you can't _walk_. Can you not see yourself? You've been dragging one leg the whole time and fucking - you make it two steps before your whole body sways and then shit, man, what's wrong with your eyes? You're not even seeing me, are you? How the fuck did you hope to fly a plane?"

Castle sucked in a breath, tried to just get a breath, and then he shoved Mitchell off of him and rolled to his hands and knees, gasping. He would damn well crawl then. "I've got to get her."

"You're not doing anything but going back to the hospital."

And then Castle felt the MPs hauling him to his feet and he opened his eyes to see the hangar being carried farther and farther away from him, his arms pinned behind his back and the white flame of pain eating away at his sight, all of it, all of it, gone.

* * *

Beckett shucked off the fleece and felt the whine as it was torn from her throat, felt it raw and aching. Her body was pain.

She growled to push it all back, clutched the fleece against her abs as she stumbled to a stop.

Behind her was silence, but she bet the damn wolf wasn't far off.

The fleece was dry now, mostly, a few patches of damp, but she had the shirt underneath still wet and clinging to her skin. Beckett lifted the hem and stuck it in her mouth, sucked hard to get at the moisture. It made her stomach cramp painfully, and she had to bend forward and breathe it down.

Her stomach rolled again and Beckett closed her eyes, tried to count it down - five, four, three-

But before she could make it to one, she was dry heaving and collapsing to her knees, the acid burning up her stomach and esophagus, her nose.

Behind her the wind sighed through the scrub grass, sounding wolf-like, and she moaned, forced herself back up on her feet, up.

Her stomach thrashed.

Kate clapped a hand over her mouth and refused. Refused. She wouldn't. She had to keep moving, and her throat ached and burned, but no. No. No. No.

God, no.

She kept moving. She had to keep moving.

Oh, fuck, the fleece.

Beckett spun back around, dizzy, nauseated, but scraped the jacket off the rock and clutched it harder against her chest, started stumbling westward again.

* * *

"Make me understand," Mitchell said again. The jeep zoomed through the base, its speed making Castle feel sick.

He grit his teeth and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to black out the whiteness. The cuffs rattled against his wrists, the foot bracelets were constricting, but he had a hard time staying conscious right this second.

"Make me understand, Castle."

"My father tried to murder Kate," he said finally, breathing out hard and lifting his head.

Mitchell blanched, slowly shook his head.

Castle kept going, now that it was out there. "A year ago - nearly two years now, Black took her at gunpoint to an alley behind a hotel in New York. To execute her. He thinks Kate... he doesn't like how I've changed because of her. He wanted to eliminate the problem."

"Kate tell you this?"

"No," he growled. "I fucking saw it."

"You... saw it."

"I went looking for her. I knew she was supposed to be - meeting someone - at that hotel. I opened up the exit door and there she was. On her knees in a damn alley. Her eyes were closed. I'll never forget that look on her face."

"Fuck." Mitchell stared at him.

"I beat the shit out of Black."

"_You_... " Mitchell was staring at him. "It wasn't that... it wasn't - it was you."

"Kate wouldn't let me kill him."

"Fuck. Fuck, man, he's your _father._"

"He's never been my father. He's cold and soulless and he's nothing of mine."

Mitchell slumped back against the seat in the back of the jeep as it hurtled back towards the hospital.

"All that matters is Kate," Castle said harshly. The jeep rounded a corner and he swayed, smacked against the window with a groan of surprise. The agony behind his eyes was making it hard to keep them open, hard to concentrate. "I have to get Kate. He wants her dead - he'd kill her himself if he found her, Mitch. I have to-"

"Leave it to me," Mitchell said suddenly.

Castle lifted his head. "No. You - no. I have to-"

"Leave it to me. Fuck, Castle. We're friends. Right? But let me tell you something right now. You should be dead. Everything that happened out there - she fucking saved your life. And I get it. I know you want to go, but you can't. You physically will not make it. Let me look for her, you heal, or otherwise what she did is all in vain."

"It has to be me," Castle said. "If it's not me, I don't know that... I don't know how you'll ever find her."

"Because what? You guys are magic or some shit? No. I'll take a flight out there and I'll fucking suit up and go look for her. And you, my friend, are going to heal. One way or another."

Dread washed over him so fiercely he couldn't breathe. "No. No, Mitch. He'll fucking sedate me. I can't. I can't. Beckett-"

"No." Mitchell's eyes were dark on his. "Black's not going to sedate you, Castle."

The tight fist eased a fraction and he turned his body carefully towards Mitchell, his friend, his co-worker, Mitchell. "Hey, man, I-"

"Black's not going to sedate you, Castle, because I am. For your own damn good."

* * *

It was growing dark. She was leaning against a stubby tree, eyes closed, trying to summon up the nerve to take another mouthful of water when she heard the low whine and the scrabble of paws over rock.

Beckett jerked upright, her heart skittering in her chest, but the Wolf was moving _away_.

On instinct, she crouched at the base of the stunted tree, its gnarled trunk twisting at her feet and she shifted farther back into shadows, let herself be small against the rocks and scrub brush.

And then she heard it.

The Russians.

Thank God for that damn wolf.

Beckett eased deeper into the knot of scrub around the tree, figured the underground river must come close to the surface here, and she put her body low to the ground, her cheek to cold, brittle dirt, and she stared out into the darkness.

The army was making a perimeter. sweep. She had to be close to those caves where they'd stashed the car.

It wouldn't be long now.

* * *

Castle roared when they brought the needle close, writhing against the restraints and bellowing at them all, screaming at the last even as Mitchell grimly held his arm down.

The IV went in easy, the drugs slipped down the tube, and he moaned and cursed them with the raw, burning voice he had left.

Mitchell was bent over him, still gripping his arm. "I'll get her. I'll get her. I'll get her. I won't let Black know."

"Fuck, fucking fucking - fuck you, fuck you all, you bastards-"

"Quiet, be quiet. Shut up for once in your life, shut up."

"You God-damn-"

"I'll talk to the doctor. No more after this round. No more after this, you hear me? But you gotta keep your fucking mouth shut, Castle. You have to _let me do this_."

He groaned as it hit him, a fucking damn _tsunami_ of drugs crashing down over his head.

"I'll go look. Russia is off-limits to us right now, but I'll go look, Castle. I swear. I'll go. You just have to keep your mouth shut, let the drugs work, and fucking well _heal._"

Kate. God, please. Kate. He had to get Kate.

The rip tide dragged him out, out, beyond, down, drowning and drowning down.

* * *

Beckett closed her eyes and prayed.

She felt the vibration of boots on the ground, the echo of it against her ribs and putting her heartbeat out of rhythm. The smell of grease and oil as the tank drove by, grumbling and spitting out dust and rock in its wake, the careless talk indistinguishable over the grumble of military gear.

She hadn't had the strength to run; she had to pray the army was just passing by, doing maneuvers at the perimeter of their post, something other than actively looking for her.

It'd been the disappearance of the wolf again that had warned her. She was finding him a good little shadow, scary enough to keep her awake and moving, and frightened enough himself to abandon her when trouble came her way.

The boots. The smell. The hoarse call and response.

It was the third time she'd gotten too close to the Russian Army, even though she kept trying to loop around them. Kate trembled as she laid in the dirt, only meager scrub brush cloaking her, and it took hours, it took an eternity, but finally they passed.

They passed right by her, right on by.

She squinted her eyes against the still-churning dust and then lifted her head and looked around. She had probably fifteen minutes before Wolf came slinking back and she found she needed every single second of those minutes to gather her energy back and stand once more. It was getting harder and harder each time; it was becoming impossible.

She pressed a palm to the cold dirt, drew one knee up under her chest, rocked up.

She could do this. She needed to do this.

_Keep moving, Beckett._


	6. Chapter 6

**Close Encounters 9**

* * *

Beckett got nervous when Wolf got closer.

But she had needed the rest, had needed a moment to stop and breathe.

Her palms tingled with her body's attempt to dump adrenaline through her blood stream but it felt more like dizziness. Fight or flight wasn't happening any more.

Wolf slinked at the edges of her vision, roamed a little ways ahead of her, waiting for her to die.

_fuck off_

No! No, stay. Stay.

Beckett pressed her lips together and slowly slid the fleece on over her head, shivering as the light began to leave the day. Her bones ached again, that place at her hip so stiff that the actual movement of her leg made her grit her teeth.

"Back off," she growled and Wolf skittered away again, back behind the high ridge of rock-

Fuck, the _rock_.

The cave. Shit, how could she have missed it? She had to pay attention, had to, had to pay attention. They'd hidden the company car in a series of caves just south of the facility and she would never find it again if she overshot.

The caves. Okay. Here. Somewhere around here. She was close.

Beckett stood - an awkward process that made her vision go black for a second - and she wrapped her arms around her torso in a futile attempt to keep warm. She scanned the horizon while the light was still good and tried to remember, tried to find something familiar.

A landmark.

There was supposed to be a copse of short trees just to the right of the open cave, big enough for a vehicle, and Castle had marked it with a piece of chalky rock. That might be gone by now.

She licked her chapped lips and cleared her throat, her hands shaking.

Everything looked the same. It all looked the same.

How in the world was she supposed to find it?

* * *

There were no trees in sight.

So she got down on her hands and knees and crawled inside a cave at random, licking her lips as the darkness closed in tight around her. It wasn't that she was stupid enough (or that insensible yet) to forget that they'd had to drive a fucking car into this cave she was looking for, but that she was beginning to see how they were all connected.

It might be safer to wander through the dark caves, one by one, daisy chaining her way along than to stay above ground and be captured by Russians or eaten by Wolf.

Wait.

Beckett paused in the darkness, the complete and absolute black, and followed her reasoning along its fragmented lines.

Wandering around in complete darkness through caves she didn't know and hadn't surveyed and which might also contain wild animals seeking shelter without the horizon's line of sight for guidance? _Damn it._

Okay. Maybe she was a little closer to insensible than she'd thought.

Beckett scooted backwards through the narrow channel and out once more into the Russian twilight, panting so hard with that skittering panic that she almost missed it.

The yelp of animal fear and the cold brush of muzzle at her ankle.

Beckett spun around in the blue light but Wolf was gone, a flash of black and brown as it limped away, but her heart throbbed so painfully that she had to sink to the ground and close her eyes, swallow hard, a hand gripping the edge of the cave's mouth.

Fuck, Wolf was going to get her sooner rather than later.

* * *

She'd searched the line of rock that had looked so familiar a mere four hours ago - four, five, something - a long enough time that she was beginning to doubt herself in the wan darkness.

Wolf hadn't slunk back yet, but she'd pulled the knife from its sheath and held it weakly in her fist, trying to keep her mind focused on it and also the ridge line and also the sound of boots.

She was shaking. She had trouble keeping her thoughts in one place; she was bouncing from the idea of the cave, the car, the wolf, her own wolf at home, baby wolves waiting for their injured daddy to come home with terrible-tasting, stringy human meat.

She was losing it.

Beckett was losing it.

She needed to find that damn car.

She took another faltering step back where she'd come, scanned the area as she raised her hand to tuck her ratty hair behind her ear.

The blade flashed in starlight a moment before it grazed her cheek and she startled back with a curse, dropping the knife and tripping over scrub brush, landing on her ass.

"Fuck," she groaned, closing her eyes as the pain echoed hard and angry in her guts, her bones, her very breath.

Her arm throbbed from the wolf's bite, her hip was now alive again with pain, and more - there was more, she didn't want to know or think, but she was a writhing wire of agony.

Her stomach cramped hard and she curled on her side, gagged in the darkness, heard her own retching echo strangely off the rock, the open caves. The pathetic sound of her own sob bounced back to her and she growled instead, swallowed down the burn of stomach acid and got to her knees.

There was the knife.

She grabbed it, scraping her fingers on rock, and she got to her feet slowly.

She was not losing it. She was not losing it.

Find a place to hole up tonight, wait it out.

Start again tomorrow.

She had to find the car.

* * *

Pulling her knees to her chest for warmth, tucked into the back of the tightest, narrowest cave she could find, Beckett tortured herself with thoughts of him.

Castle.

Her breath caught in her chest and she felt him there, told herself the crumbling edge of sanity was at least good for something.

The wide warmth of his palm against her neck and his fingers tangling in her hair. The press of his arm against hers, shoulders bumping.

She wanted his smile, the exact light in his eyes, but the memories just wouldn't resolve. The seeing wasn't there, just the feeling.

She'd take it.

The heavy weight of him over her in bed, how sharp his hip bones felt against hers, the raw places at her skin when they got home late and the scruff had grown in and scratched at her. She shivered at the feeling and pressed her hand to her chest, sucking down breath.

She missed him.

It hit her just then. She wanted to be found, not lost; she wanted to be in civilization and in a bed and no wolf at the door, but more than that, she missed him. She wanted to reach out and lace her fingers through his and feel him squeeze back and know.

They'd make it out of here.

_We'll make it out of here, Kate._

She felt her breath whistling through the trapped density of her lungs, the effort of grief. Tears didn't come this time, couldn't. They were gone and she was weeping only the agony of dry ducts, the sorrow like a steel fist around her body and slowly breaking her.

She wanted him; she wanted him here.

Castle.

The frozen boxcar, the burning house, that time with the bomb or the elevator or the Chinese spy.

She had always thought they'd die together. Side by side.

_Will we really make it out of here?_

* * *

She woke at first light, felt it touching her cheek like a hesitant kiss. _I'm sorry I have to do this, sweetheart, but time to get up._

Beckett stirred in the cave's tight confines and tried to unfold her legs, stiff and aching. With rest came clarity, or something like it, and she was grateful she'd been with it enough to find a place the wolf couldn't follow.

She had to slither out on her belly, almost afraid _she_ wouldn't make it, but at the last, sweating, panicked moment, she fell out into the wider world.

No Wolf.

No Russian Army though, either. How many times had she run into them yesterday? At least four. They were heavy in this area for some reason; she couldn't understand why they'd be so far west of the underground facility, so far west of where they'd last seen her as well.

She couldn't dwell on the motivations and reasonings behind the Russian Army though. She had to start moving again, find the car. She needed that car. She had no water - clothes were still damp with cold but not water-logged - and this was day... eight? without real food.

She'd stuffed handfuls of grass into her mouth yesterday, vomited it back up. How many times had she thrown up whatever meager amount was in her stomach? More than she could sustain, most likely.

Whatever energy her sleep had given her, she knew she'd burn it off too quickly. She needed water, food; she needed to be looking for that cave, but she also had to be aware of her limitations.

Fuck, _limitations?_ - that was an understatement.

She was wolf-food for sure.

* * *

In the morning light, the line of rock looked different. It was the edge of the Russian steppe, where the straight, flat grassland met the craggy base of some kind of mountain range. She remembered the trail of Castle's wide finger over the map as they'd planned this inside his father's base camp.

Oh.

His father's base camp. Could she find it again?

Beckett swayed as she ducked out of the fifth likely cave she'd found this morning. She paused there and turned back the way she'd come, thinking about Black's supplies, the computers - he'd had a car too. He had all kinds of things. A damn _bed_ and even if he was still there, she could fucking deal. She could handle Black.

She stumbled a little ways farther, the idea taking root.

Could she find it? Could she trek all the way back east and... and... wait.

No, no. Hold on.

Beckett untangled the snarled threads of thought and followed it back, tugging, her feet paused on the same path she'd just blazed.

His father's cave. Deep in the side of that mountain. They'd driven straight out from Mayak, following Black into the foothills and-

Shit. _Beckett, pay attention, you idiot._

Samara. They'd driven from Samara, Russia, that time. Not Mayak. His Batman cave was _nowhere near here._

God, she was losing it. She was confused and messing it up and how did she even know that she'd actually looked through every cave that was a good candidate? How could she even trust that the caves she dismissed as being unlikely weren't in fact the very cave she was looking for?

Beckett pressed her hand over her mouth and fought back the urge to cry.

She took a slow look around and turned, moving back towards the unexplored section of the path through the low-lying rocks.

More caves. Keep looking.

It'd be here somewhere. She had to believe that. She had to push forward, keep going; she'd find it ahead of her.

Behind her lay only madness.

* * *

Oh God.

Oh God.

This was it.

Everything was the same. The trees outside the mouth that kept the wide entrance camouflaged, made it look like a strange shadow against the rock. The ridge along the horizon like a broken camel.

She hadn't seen the wolf all day until right this moment. It was like a fucking sign.

Watching her from the scraggle of trees just beside the mouth, Wolf was taunting her. _I found it first and it's mine._

"Hell, no," she grunted and she walked straight for the animal.

Wolf growled low in its throat, but she was fucking done. She was done. God, she was so over this.

She reached for the knife in its sheath, too late remembered it was already in her hand; she felt the blade glance off her knee and sucked in a breath but apparently she was too weak to even hurt herself.

Great.

"It's mine, you little bastard. Back off."

Wolf whined and bounded off in that crippled gate, his back leg pulled up and dragging from time to time, the beast unbalanced.

She felt the strange wince of her heart as he left, but she shook it off and kept going for the cave.

The cave. The car. Everything.

* * *

The mouth was so wide she could stretch her arms out and still not touch. Beckett kept a few fingers against the left hand wall to keep her balance and picked her way carefully deeper inside.

It would be damn ironic if she hurt herself now, so she made herself slow down, take the time, do it right.

Was she going _that _slow?

They hadn't driven that far in, had they?

Had it been back this far?

She ignored the damp prickle of panic along her skull and kept going, the wash of sunlight from the entrance now disappearing entirely, swallowed by the deep interior.

It was smooth here; they'd seen animal markings when they'd explored a little ways back but they'd been old, dried up and done. The rock skimmed her fingers, her knuckles bounced along sudden outcroppings, but she kept moving back.

Was she too far to one side? Could she possible miss the car in the darkness?

It hadn't been this far back.

It hadn't been this far back.

But this was the cave. This was it. This had to be it.

Beckett stopped walking, heard the harsh exhale of her breath, and slowly spun back around.

This had to be it.

* * *

She refused to cry.

God damn it. She refused.

Beckett spun slowly in a circle in front of the cave and eyed the surrounding landscape.

Everything was there. She wasn't imagining it. She wasn't.

This was the place.

God, why?

She spun back and jerked forward, fumbling back inside and down, farther inside, kept going, still going.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Fuck.

She screamed and the sound echoed hard and pounded back at her, but _fuck_.

No.

The car was gone.

It was gone.

The car was gone.

* * *

At first she thought it was the growl of her own frustration, the sob of her hopelessness rising up in her throat and choking her. She'd move off the main cave and deeper into the darkness of a kind of tunnel, found the walls closing in on her before widening out again, but she'd been moving recklessly, furious and heart-broken and stupid, the faint sound like gurgling in her head.

But then she realized.

Water.

She heard water.

Beckett dropped to her knees in the absolute black of the cave and pushed her hands out, seeking. She could hear it. The sound of the underground river now trickling somewhere near by, dripping, sweet and pure and life-saving.

No damn car, but there was - somewhere - water. If she could find it.

Her breathing was loud in the darkness but she closed her eyes just to _hear_ and slowed her heart and listened.

Water.

There was water. She eased to the left and brushed her fingers over rock, some kind of sticky substance she wouldn't dwell on, and the grime of old animal activity. She inched a bit farther, cautious of sudden drops: the underground river often came up again with a force of broken rock, a gauge out of the earth, something to fall in or hurt herself on.

She'd done it enough now to know.

Beckett felt the slippery slide of growing things and her heart raced.

Water. There was water.

She crawled a little farther and reached out again. Sliminess, damp, the scent of it in her nostrils, and then her fingers splashed into a pool of it.

Water.

She scuffled forward, had to be slow, be careful, be careful, and there it was.

Practically nothing, a trickle, but everything.

Water.

She put her mouth to the upswelling and let the slow current wash over her lips and tongue, and then she lapped it up like a dog.

Like a wolf.

* * *

When she couldn't vomit any more, when her stomach was done ripping its way out of her, when it had ceased to even be a battle to keep enough water in that came out, she finally laid her head against the rock and closed her eyes.

She was so tired.

She had water; she could crawl back out and keep looking for-

No, nothing more to look for. This was the cave, sweetheart.

No car, but this was the cave. What good was it to keep looking? This was the thing she'd been looking for.

God, she was so tired. She just had to lie down and think.

Give her a second to think.

_Regroup, Beckett. Come up with a new strategy._

Is that what we're calling it, Castle? How 'bout we just say it like it is.

I give up.

_For now._

She sighed and turned her back on him.

_For now._

* * *

She dreamed of Castle but then she dreamed of things in her mouth. The taste of him and then the taste of chocolate, the mixture of flavors, the dream blurring from their belated honeymoon to the drizzle of hot fudge and the sharp chill of ice cream on her tongue.

The sweet melt down her throat, swallowing it down, the thick warmth, the strange confluence of eroticism and hunger. Dessert.

She woke choking on it, struggled back to awareness even as her ragged breath startled her.

Beckett pressed a hand to her mouth to hold it in, closed her eyes against the vision of hot fudge sundaes.

And strawberry milkshakes. Oh God. The rich and thick cold down her throat and the sucking force of her mouth on the straw.

Remy's strawberry shake. Castle had bought her one after she was shot; he'd left it on her tray by her bed and she'd woken up to it, found it waiting on her in one of those to-go cups and she'd wrapped her fingers around its sweating side, felt her heart unfolding for him, soft and sweet and shy.

The misery of that moment in conjunction with the beauty of it, and then the misery of _now_ seemed to create some kind of burning, clear line back in time, all the way back before that moment, until she had the memory playing out behind her eyes so perfectly, so there, that she couldn't believe she'd never seen it before. Seen him.

Walking into Remy's late. Her wallet in hand to pay off her running tab. Literally running, because whenever there was a break in a case, she'd hop up and have the waitress keep the bill. She always came back to pay it; the whole staff knew them from the 12th, kept their food waiting on them.

She'd been ready to pay, waiting to pay, and the waitress had waved her off. Beckett had never liked the city's sense of _owing_ the cops, and so she'd insisted, pulled out a twenty dollar bill.

_It's been taken care of. A cute guy in a suit; he was watching you - he paid for it. All of it._

And then the waitress had handed her the to-go cup for her strawberry milkshake.

Strawberry and the pink so cold on her tongue and the taste of sweet ice cream, the chunks of real fruit.

Castle. It had been him, all those years ago, watching her.

The Chinese spy, Maria and the telescope, the man from the CIA who had abducted her off the road one night and snared her more thoroughly than she'd ever been captured before.

He hadn't even known her, and he'd paid for her tab at Remy's.

How she loved him.

And now finally the image of his face came to her, clearly and distinctly, the crow's feet from smiling and the bags under his eyes when he was tired, the lines that came from his nose and bracketed his mouth.

She let out a long breath and curled her fingers around her knees, closed her eyes on the terrible, gorgeous memory of this man.

And a milkshake.

God, she wanted a milkshake.

* * *

She heard him in the night.

The Wolf.

She stirred and tried to retreat, move, scare him off, but she couldn't.

She couldn't.

She was - her body was refusing to obey her. The knife. She had no idea and she could hear him, could hear the movement at the mouth of the cave and-

She tensed, panic exploding through her blood and making her fists clench but all she could do was lay panting in the darkness.

Russians.

She heard them now, heard the snarl of the Wolf standing its ground this time, the call of an enlisted man to another one, the sounds brought back to her by the echo of the wide cave.

_It is just that she-wolf. No more. It has always been the damn wolf._

She pressed her hand over her mouth, tried to get to her knees. Even that was agony, the stiff and frozen joints breaking to move.

_Shoot her. Put her out of her misery._

_All right. Tell the Commander it's just the wounded wolf. _

The gunshot sounded too loud and immediately came the yelp of the dog and then silence. The silence went on until it pounded in her head, echoes of a faint whine, the wolf, the wolf, the sound of the two Russian men getting back in the jeep and roaring away and she laid there, she laid there alone in the darkness and cried.

She cried.

* * *

Castle woke bleary and muzzled, his head pounding. Body heavy. He felt the press on his hip and moved his head, opened his eyes to sunlight.

He took a hesitant breath but it came.

The sunlight was real and it filtered in through the blinds, made stripes across his torso.

No white in his eyes, no agony behind his sockets.

He couldn't remember what exactly he'd been expecting, but it was gentler and more calming than he deserved.

He turned his head and it was a hospital room.

Castle licked dry lips and flexed his fingers, moved to sit. The heart rate monitor picked up a little and he felt his body sway like waking after a long sleep. He drew his legs out of bed and plucked the thing off his finger, pulled the sensors from his chest.

The IV snagged and he stared down at his arm, horror beginning to trickle down through him like ice melting, the slow slide of memory.

They'd sedated him.

_Kate_.

God, how long? How long had he been out?

He yanked out the IV and pushed off the bed, felt the hospital gown flapping open at his ass as he lunged for the door.

It was opened by a nurse, two nurses, a doctor - all of them coming in through the doorway and holding up placating hands.

"Mr Smith-"

He stared at them, sucking in deep breaths, standing on his own two feet, hospital gown gaping open at the back and cold, and then his father came in through the doorway and raised an eyebrow.

"Son, I think you're giving the ladies across the way a free show."

* * *

On her hands and knees outside the cave, she stared down at the body.

The mutilated leg, the bullet to the head.

It was still alive.

Barely alive.

She kept her distance; the dog had snapped at her and its one good back leg had churned at the ground when she'd reached unthinkingly for it. The whine came off and on, a pitiful thing that twisted in her guts and made her tremble.

Wolf.

It was still alive.

That round, dark eye so desperate.

She laid down where she was, her cheek against the rock, five feet from the animal, and she kept watch over it.

If she thought she could get her knife in its neck, she'd help it along.

But she was afraid she didn't have the strength. All she could do was watch Wolf expire.

_I'm sorry._

Me too, Castle. I'm sorry too.

She wanted to go home.


	7. Chapter 7

**Close Encounters 9**

* * *

Castle sat in the visitor's chair and spooned scrambled eggs into his mouth as his father talked. He knew the drill. Stick to the program, bide his time until he could figure out what the hell to do.

"The sedation was to your benefit, Richard."

It took every effort he had not to choke on those eggs.

"Your leg has healed cleanly. The concussion seems to be gone. MRI scans were clear. It was my decision to bring you out of heavy sedation."

Mitchell had promised. Mitchell had _promised_.

"I've gotten the team well in hand, as you'll see. You'll - of course - have six weeks of rehab assignment before you can join us officially. But I'm sure the company won't mind if you sit in on operations until then. Seeing as how it used to be your team."

And what about _Beckett? _Fuck Black for thinking that's all it would take. A few days heavy sedation to make him _forget his wife_.

"I've got a meeting in five, son. It's good to see you up and coming along - right on schedule. Mitchell will brief you about rehab, set up your training regimen."

Black stood and shambled out, his gait still crippled from where Castle had done serious damage, but he looked _overjoyed_.

And then Mitchell came in.

Castle pushed aside the tray and stood up. "Where is she?"

Mitchell swallowed hard. "I - Castle. You're gonna have to just listen to me."

* * *

Fur was everywhere.

It stuck to her fingers and got in her mouth; it clung to the dirt and snarled in the scrub brush, gristle and pelt alike.

Kate cleaned the knife once more, the blade singing against the side of the rock, kept her mouth closed to keep from breathing in fur.

She'd cleaned fish with her father; she'd descaled a trout and she'd plucked clean a duck sitting side by side with him on the back porch. Her father had once killed a deer, but he'd gotten it professionally cut; the meat came back wrapped just like what they'd get from the grocery store.

That winter they'd eaten venison for nearly every meal. Her father's rule: only kill what you can eat. And her mother had complained, rebelled, taken them out to eat whenever she got home early enough. Her father ate it alone, dogmatic and reserved in his meal, but not an ounce of resentment. He'd never killed a deer after that one summer.

She didn't know how to field dress a wolf.

The internal organs were first; she'd known that much. But she hadn't had anything to string up the wolf and she hadn't thought she could stand up that long anyway. So instead she had visualized the autopsy suite and her friend Lanie - God, so far from here - and she'd started at the sternum and cut her way through to the abdomen.

She had no idea how edible internal organs were without some kind of special preparation, but the intestines, the bladder - she had to remove them first. Without - spilling things. Without ruining the meat.

Her hands were shaking badly and the blade didn't go as far as she'd thought it would and so instead of gutting Wolf cleanly, she was hacking away. She had tears again and they rolled in fat drops down her cheeks and into the ragged open cavity of the Wolf's chest, the only memorial she could afford.

The lungs, the esophagus, the gaping wound she'd made in the diaphragm. She'd seen the inside of a human before, had stood over the body while Lanie had made the cuts, had even helped crack open the ribs. She had the torque and force now to do it with the knife, but she was a trembling and sweaty mess by the time it was over.

If she thought the ribs had been brutally difficult, the pelvis was impossible. She couldn't get at the lower intestines, the rectum, without fishing around and she didn't want to accidentally cut any of those open. They'd just have to stay, though the smell was overpowering. Intensely over-

Kate swallowed hard, but the nausea climbed up her throat. She closed her eyes, swaying, tried to battle it back. But it persisted.

She dropped the knife and crawled away, retched violently at the base of a crooked tree, her vision swimming. Beckett breathed shallowly through her nose, swiped her mouth off the inside of her shirt, tasting blood.

She sucked down a shaky cry that wanted out, and then she went back to the job.

The sun was liquid overhead, a smear of too-bright light that made her eyes hurt, but Wolf was a decimated mess before her. She had to salvage what meat she could.

When most of the organs were piled in a shallow basin made of the rock, her hands trembling and black with blood, she thought maybe the skin was next.

The pelt didn't come off in one smooth coat, as she'd naively expected. It came in clumps, jagged strips; she cut her own fingers more than she cut the hide. It was worthless (she'd thought, somehow, of tanning and stretching and the Native Americans and throwing it over herself at night - _ha_) and the smell was overwhelming and her hands were covered in it. Tarred and feathered.

She should've started a fire first. The smell - she was afraid of bringing wild animals to the site now, with the scent of blood and death even though the smoke would go up and alert the humans.

She had to. She had to start a fire and burn the organs - or char them enough to eat. She had to have something; she was blacking out even as she worked, finding consciousness a moment before the blade slipped out of her grimy hands.

She had to start a fire before the animals came looking, before something nastier wanted a piece of Wolf.

Beckett scraped the blade against the rocks again and then turned slowly towards the flat land.

A fire.

CIA training hadn't exactly prepared her for this.

* * *

"I tasked a satellite through Homeland," Mitchell started quietly. "We searched for lone heat signatures, but it was..."

"You said the Russian Army," Castle interrupted. He didn't want to know about damn heat signatures. "Did you go on foot? Because the machines can't tell you-"

"Listen to me, Castle."

If Mitchell reached out and put his hand on Castle's knee, he would lose it. He would fucking lose it.

"I couldn't get close enough," Mitchell shook his head. "I got to the border and couldn't get across. I tried - shit, I tried, Castle."

He grit his teeth and clenched his fists, ducked his head to keep from going into a rage. He couldn't afford that, not if he wanted to get the fuck out of here.

"So you left her there," he said finally, breathing shallowly.

"No. No, I - Castle, I tasked the satellite and I holed up there for two days. There were pockets of Russians, and then the wildlife-"

"Wildlife."

"I swear I looked. Castle, I started my search at the sight where we picked you up and then I expanded out to the facility - even though it's crawling with Russians."

"And?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary. Just maneuvers, clean-up... Castle, there's something else."

Castle drew in a breath and paced the room, needing space, needing out of here.

"The car."

He stopped, the light from the window glaring across his bare feet. "The car."

Mitchell let out a breath. "We'd been tracking the Russian army anyway, so I had all these sat images from their deployments, movements in the area, their clean up and acquisitions and-"

"Fucking get on with it," he growled. But he couldn't turn and look at Mitchell.

"Russians found the car. The company car. They found it."

He closed his eyes. "How do you know. Confirmation?"

"I burned a source in Russian command to get it. It's the one we provided you in Samara. The one you drove to Mayak when you connected up with Beckett and Vadim. Same car you and Beckett hid in that cave and then walked-"

"Fuck," he growled and punched the wall with his fist, felt the bones shift and bloom with pain. "Fuck. The car. They got the car. Did they get Beckett?"

"No mention of an asset. Only the car. Which means they know we had people in the area and so they've been running search parameters through out the countryside."

"Shit," he moaned, his chest tight with it, his hand throbbing.

"No, that's good. That's good because it means they don't have her either. She's still - out there. If she's alive."

"She's alive," he insisted. But he didn't - she was alive. She had to be alive.

"Castle, you're gonna have to-"

"No, I'm not." He turned away from the window and faced Mitchell. "I'm getting out of here and I'm going back-"

"You can't get past the border."

"I can. I will. Beckett is out there. Did you search the coordinates I gave you for the car?"

"I told you the heat signatures didn't-"

"Fuck that. Do you know how cold it gets at night? Body temps drop."

"I took that into consideration," Mitchell placated, holding up both hands.

"No. Don't." Castle strode past him and grabbed the pile of belongings they'd left on his bedside tray, searching for the one thing... the only thing that mattered... where was it? Had his father found it? "Where's the phone? Fuck. What happened to my phone?"

"I took it."

He growled and turned but Mitchell was already holding it out; he'd pulled it from a jacket pocket. "Black - I didn't think you wanted him to have it. I took it with me, hoping that she'd call. If she... Castle, you have to face it. She's probably dead."

"She's not," he growled, snatching the phone from Mitchell. "I'm going to Russia and I'm finding my wife. You can either help me or I can fucking go up against you right here, right now."

"Castle."

"Choose."

Mitchell sighed, stared at him for a too-long moment. "Fine." He shook his head and leaned back against the wall. "Let me think. I can get you out of here, just give me a second to think."

More like it.

* * *

Kate curled on her side and panted through another round of terrible, awful nausea. Her stomach cramped and twisted and she drew her knees tighter into her chest, tried to keep breathing.

Couldn't.

She lurched to her knees and shuffled over two feet, vomited hard, her body in a rictus of agony. She fell to her elbows and heaved again, her whole system turned inside out. She crawled away from the mess, the darkness of the cave closing down on her.

How long now? Two days, two times she'd heard that damn bird in the tree go on for hours and hours as the sun rose. Two mornings of vomiting, two mornings she'd had nothing but stomach acid eating away at her.

Her arms trembled but she pushed through the darkness to the trickling water. Had to have water. Couldn't keep throwing up.

Something had to stay down. Two days since she'd cooked the Wolf and - God - maybe something had been wrong with it, maybe she hadn't cooked it long enough, but she'd set the fucking organs on fire and the meat was - she hadn't looked at it that great, it'd already been dark that first day, pitch black outside and inside and she'd shoved down as much as she thought her cramped stomach could handle.

The water was icy cold and burned her throat, but she lapped at it and then washed her hands in the slow-moving current.

The blood. There'd been so much guts and gristle and fur and-

Kate groaned and pressed her forehead to the rock, shivering now, her sweat drying on the back of her neck, along her belly. Freezing again.

Three nights now? No, no, wait. That first night she'd fallen asleep and woken. . .late. Late enough, her body so heavy and stiff that she'd known it had been a few days. She'd been slick with sweat, her hair grimy and plastered to her skull, and she'd done her best to wash off in the trickle of water coming through the cave.

She had no idea how long now. She'd meant to...

She'd meant to do... something.

Keep moving. She had to keep moving, the Wolf was-

Beckett groaned and shook her head despite the agony that pulsed the moment she moved, the fire that burned in her bones and ripped apart her guts. The Wolf was dead; the car was gone. She tried to repeat it like a mantra, tried to make it _stick_.

It wasn't bad food, it wasn't that the meat was rancid or not well-cooked.

It was her. She was...

She couldn't keep it down because it'd been too long without.

Even the water was coming back up.

Beckett moaned into the rock and the shivering started up again, the waves of nausea rising up from her stomach and vibrating her limbs until she was gagging it back, her chest and torso contorting to rid her body of every last drop.

She turned her head. Couldn't throw up in the stream. Couldn't poison her water supply. Couldn't throw up.

She had to keep it down. Had to. She had to keep it.

She pressed her mouth to her arm and refused, refused, refused it.

She wouldn't.

When it passed, it finally passed, when it passed she was shivering so hard her teeth chattered but she was drenched in sweat.

She curled onto her side and put the rock to her back, closed her eyes.

This wasn't going to work.

Not even Wolf could save her.

* * *

Castle hiked in over the ridgeline, on his hands and knees when he got to where the razor wire fence met the ground. He snapped the wire with handheld cutters, replaced the man-sized section carefully so that it would pass a cursory inspection.

This far out, that was all he was expecting from the border patrol. Cursory.

He smeared his hand along the black paint at his forehead; it itched but he couldn't scratch or it'd burn and leave clear streaks of skin. He put the cutters back in a pocket of his army pack and took out the water, sipped it slowly.

He had a massive amount of supplies weighing him down, but he didn't know Beckett's condition. When he found her - _when_ he found her - he was assuming he'd have to triage her in the field.

He'd packed for concussion, shrapnel wounds, and broken bones. Plus dehydration and malnourishment. Radiation pills, but...

It'd been thirteen days since the mortar shell, thirteen days since his father had hurried him out of there on the chopper and left Beckett to fend for herself against the whole damn Russian Army. If anyone could survive thirteen days, it was stubborn, strong-willed Kate Beckett.

He'd spent a grand total of three days conscious during that time. The last two of those spent traveling from Ramstein Base in Germany to Kiev, Ukraine by special flight - a cargo plane which required him to be literally crated in and out. In Kiev, he'd bought a spot on an illegal transport to Georgia and from there - shit, finally, - he'd crossed into Kazakhstan.

And now he'd slipped the fence into Russia.

A hundred more miles to go.

Castle put the water away and cinched the pack tighter on his shoulders, and then he crouched low and began a slow jog down the ridgeline, searching for tracks to take him away from the border and deeper into Russia.

He followed what looked like nothing more than a goat path until it broadened into a low-lying field of grass, the Russian steppe as far as he could see. He removed the transmitter from his pocket that kept relaying his signal to Mitchell and he dropped it to the ground.

He took a breath and then he crushed his heel over it, ending the signal and letting Mitchell know he'd made it across.

If the Russians found him now, he'd have plausible deniability. No CIA tech on him, not even a phone. Not even _that_ phone. He'd left it with Mitchell.

He was on his own out here. He'd never been so entirely without back-up before. He and Beckett would have to traverse back across the border alone, but-

Shit.

First he had to find her.

He had a hundred more miles to go.

He was appropriating a car the moment he came to a road.

* * *

The farm had been a fucking sign from the Universe. All he could say.

He drove the borrowed, rusted-out truck down the M5 towards Samara, going as fast as he dared, and couldn't believe how lucky that had been. Silo, farmhouse, and then a harsh line of stubbled field had given over to a storage barn.

The place had been deserted. The barn's padlock was so old that vines had grown up around the handles of the door and through the links of the chain.

He'd broken out a window and crawled inside when he'd seen the truck. In the thin light, he'd skimmed his hands over the hood and propped it open and he'd seen the problem.

Spark plugs not attached. All it took. Gas was already in the tank and he added more from the red carton next to the workbench, a thick coating of dust over everything.

He'd crawled back out and hacked at the padlock with the axe he'd found inside, and then he was rolling the truck in neutral towards the doors and out. The farmhouse stayed dark and no one came to look.

He'd replaced the chain and padlock as best he could, had threaded the vines back through the links and the handle, had made it look as un-assed as he could.

And now he had transportation.

He was getting close. He could feel it. He had the axe in the truck bed and his pack in the seat beside him and he could practically _feel_ Beckett out there, calling to him, Kate his own true north.

* * *

Damn it.

He had to turn around and go back, hide the truck somewhere. There was no way he was getting through that checkpoint.

Castle veered onto a dirt track off the road - he'd already had to divert from the M5 because of roadblocks - and he went down a few miles until he could safely stop. He checked the paper map and traced his finger over the approximate place he was and then a line towards the underground facility.

Okay, time to think.

He'd plotted a series of five coordinates - places he thought Beckett might have been - and he needed to eliminate them quickly. From where he was, the underground facility itself was closest, but he really hoped she hadn't gone back that way.

In hindsight, they knew now that the Russian Army had overrun the facility, but even though she might not have known, she still could see that those mortar shells had been coming from that direction. She was smart; she was very smart.

Even though the facility was closest, he was going to rule it out.

That left the cave where they'd hidden the car and the cave where his father had set up camp. If she was being followed by the Russian Army, if she knew the car had been taken, she'd have gone for his father's Batcave.

But the Batcave was clear in the other direction from the car, and he had to choose - one direction or the other.

She didn't have much time.

Castle scraped a hand down his face and recalled her message to him on the phone. She'd known he'd get it eventually, she had known he'd be held up for a while in recovery. She'd had to convince herself he'd be okay - _you'll be fine, you'll be fine._

Where would she go? What choice would she make, knowing that it might be a good long while before anyone came for her?

Castle growled and started the truck, turned it around, his foot heavy on the gas, aching to get there.

He hoped he'd made the right choice.

* * *

He had to ditch the truck about twenty miles out and hike in the rest of the way. He avoided the Russian patrol, despite a burning need to terminally subdue the threat, and he let them live and continued on.

Killing scouts would only alert the Russians that he was here and he didn't have the time to lie in wait and do it right. He had a good pace set, quick enough with the pack on his shoulders, but he was afraid it wasn't fast enough for Beckett.

He had this burning in his guts that wouldn't let up, no matter how fast he ate up the distance. He was out of conditioning, lying in bed for thirteen days, and he felt the cramps in his muscles even if his body still knew the basic rhythms for breathing.

The pack was heavy and his legs were weak and he wasn't going his usual pace.

He tried not to let it drag him down, tried not to let himself think about how damn slow he was now.

It was taking too long.

The sun flared overhead and dipped down, and still he kept up his pace, pushing past the tightness in his chest and the stiffness in his thighs, kept going. It'd take him all afternoon to get there, so he'd be approaching the caves in the dark, which wasn't ideal.

But this was the fastest he dared.

He scrambled to a halt when he heard footsteps, the call of men, and he darted his head around, searching for signs of them.

There. Just over the horizon line.

Fuck.

It was flat grassland from here to eternity.

Castle dipped low and sank into the waist high grass off the track, slunk back farther as he dragged his pack after him. He felt a twinge in his knee and ignored it, crawled on his belly away from the dirt path.

He held his breath and kept his head down as the soldiers passed in lazy formation. Another patrol, probably hadn't seen any action this far from the facility. Probably weren't looking for signs of a covert agent either.

He waited a good ten minutes and then he rose silently to his feet and stared after them.

Meant they hadn't seen signs of Beckett either, if they weren't on alert.

Was he going the right way at all?

* * *

Castle was breathing hard now, the run of cave entrances right in front of him, the scent of cold in his nostrils as night fell. He had maybe a hundred yards before he was there and he felt it in his guts like flame.

He didn't want to have wasted this whole day. He didn't even know how many days she had - if she was even still - he could be thirteen days too damn late and he had _no more time_.

Castle hesitated when he saw the ragged line in the dirt, his breath so loud in his own ears that at first he didn't hear it.

Russians.

Fuck. He dropped to one knee and turned towards the east, hunched in the dirt right past the grass, the caves so close.

But so far.

Troop movement just past the clump of trees. It looked like an intense search - since this was an area so much closer to the point of impact. He should've known they'd be combing this region, going over it and over it.

The car had been here. It stood to reason the Russians wouldn't give up that easily.

Castle hunched his shoulders and slowly took off the pack, kept his eyes on the distant troops. The light had almost gone and the darkness was doing him favors now, covering his approach.

It went against everything in him to slink back to that field of grass on the Russian steppe, away from the caves, but he couldn't stay out in the open.

Could he?

He waited in the darkness, indecisive for once his damn life, and he couldn't. He was this close to her; he could feel it. She was there. She had to be there.

Castle reached into his pack and slid out his knife, holstered his gun at his thigh. He withdrew the blade from its sheath and kept his eyes on the Russian squad.

He counted, from this distance, about fifteen. But he could be wrong, he was seeing clumps of guys and estimating. Should their three-man scout group come upon him, he didn't want to attract attention.

He'd slit their throats and drag them into the grass. He'd fucking-

Castle growled and hunkered down a little farther, on his haunches in the dirt.

No. No, he couldn't. If Beckett was there, then he couldn't draw attention to her. He'd couldn't.

But he wasn't retreating. Hell, no.

Not doing it. She was _close_. A matter of yards. He wasn't going back.

Castle put the pack on his shoulders and adjusted it tighter to his back; he got low and began moving forward.

The squad had pulled out flashlights and were using them to scan the area, looking pretty serious about their search, so Castle headed for the first cave entrance. He couldn't believe they hadn't seen, didn't know how this range connected, but it was likely these guys weren't natives to the region.

Someone had to be though. Someone had to know - or would know soon. Someone. It couldn't go on like this, searching the flat lands for her, before they went back to the cave where they'd found the car and discovered the tunnels that connected between them.

He paused when the light swung his way, crouched close to the earth. He breathed slowly through his nose until he was sure they were focused elsewhere, and then he kept crawling forward.

It took nearly twenty minutes to cross the last one hundred yards, but by the time he got to the clump of runty trees near the entrance, the Russian troops had pushed farther down the ridge line.

He put his hand to the tree and gripped the bark, watching the soldiers scour the grass. His fingers scuffed at the bark and he frowned, glanced down. Ash marks against the tree trunk.

He crouched down and pressed his fingers to the dirt at the base of the tree, felt the sticky residue. Something had been burned here.

By _someone._

Castle cast one last look through the darkness towards the Russians moving away from him and then he darted for the cave entrance, going in blind and by memory alone.

When he slammed into the side of the rock wall, he grunted and dropped to his knees, skimmed his hands over it until he met no resistance.

There it was.

Damn, his shoulder ached.

Castle shuffled inside, going slowly, feeling his way until he thought he was deep enough inside that the beam of his flashlight wouldn't be seen. He flicked it on and scanned the interior and immediately, immediately, he knew she'd been here.

Vomit and blood, the shine of one of his military issue knives. And the carcass of an animal.

She'd been here. But he didn't know if she'd survived it.


	8. Chapter 8

**Close Encounters 9**

* * *

Castle was afraid Beckett wasn't here now; he was scanning the back of the cave where they'd stashed the car and just looking for clues for what she'd done next when he heard it.

A trickle of water.

Castle dropped to his haunches and shined the flashlight into the recesses, peering into shadows. He heard water. It was less than nothing, not even a clue, but he pushed forward and looked for the source.

A connecting tunnel met his light, and the space was so tight that he had to take the pack off and crawl. He pushed the pack ahead of him and his shoulders skimmed the rock, and then the tunnel opened up immediately onto a clearing.

He could hear the water now, the fall of it into some kind of basin and he could stand, the pack dangling from one hand, the flashlight in the other. He scanned the beam over the opening and saw the glitter of water as is came up and ran like a brook through-

"Kate."

He jerked toward her and fell on his knees at her side, hands reaching for her. She was cold as ice and didn't wake at his voice, she had one arm over her head and her fingers in the water, her face pressed to the rock floor.

Castle propped the flashlight near her and cupped her jaw, skimmed his hands around her neck, searching for broken bones.

"Kate. Kate, sweetheart." He felt his throat close up when the flashlight rolled and caught the nasty wound at her arm, bite marks. Puffy and raw. "Kate."

He kept her head in line with her neck and rolled her onto her back; he didn't like the way her body flopped, too loose.

God, she looked terrible. Emaciated and drawn up. Bruised. Blood crusted in her hair. Her skin was freezing cold. Castle kept one hand at her neck and grabbed his pack, ripped the sleeping bag from its straps. He rolled it out with one hand and put a knee to the edge, snagged the zipper to yank it open. It took too long, too long, but he carefully, so carefully, guided it under her body to get her off the rock.

Using the sleeping bag as a travois, he carried her a little ways from the stream, away from what looked like vomit and - and bones? He had no idea, but the smell of rot was intense.

Castle resumed his check of her body, opening up her clothes and tugging the stained, soiled garments off of her. Fuck, the stitches at her hip were pulled out, looked raw. He shined the light on her skin and kept going, checking the rest of her, fingers fumbling at her skin.

Blood had dried behind her ear, an old wound, and the bullet graze at her hip was messed up but not infected, thank God. The arm was the only thing he worried about. A bite wound? And her unconsciousness wasn't a good sign either.

Castle opened up his pack and pulled out the kit he'd packed with Mitchell's help. Saline IV and broad spectrum antibiotics. He checked the packs to make sure nothing had leaked or broken, and then he set everything carefully in place. He had a packet of sanitizing wipes and he started by cleaning the wounds, chucking the dirtied cloths towards the mess at the other end of the clearing.

When he went over the raggedly healing wound at her hip, her body jerked and twitched. "Kate?" he breathed out, eyes darting to her face.

God, her face.

He felt cracked in the middle, broken in half with it. She didn't wake.

First he had to care for the wounds, the bite on her forearm. A wolf or feral dog, most likely. He squeezed the sides of the skin at her arm until the pus ran clear, wiped it clean with a sanitizing cloth, over and over again as if he could erase the last thirteen days worth of terror.

He dressed the wound with gauze and tape; it was too shallow for stitches. His hands were steady but his breathing was ragged, and he frowned fiercely into the darkness to get himself under control.

Castle picked a new cloth and cleaned her cheeks, her temples, the scrape at her chin and the lines down her neck. Her skin was papery with dehydration and he needed to get the saline going, get the IV in her arm.

God, she looked bad. She looked bad. He didn't know if she-

He pressed his lips together and grabbed the bottle of hand sanitizer, squeezed it out over the crook of her elbow. He cleaned her off and wiped the gel from her skin, then carefully inserted the needle in her vein.

The flashlight rolled again and he cursed, jerked his hand for it, put it in his mouth to keep it steady. He held the needle still, inserted the catheter, and attached the line. No air in the line, thank goodness, and he raised the bag of saline to get it started.

He fixed a tent pole to the bag and propped it up against the rock, made sure it would hold steady. Then he opened up the broad-spectrum antibiotics and attached it to the line; she needed a few hours of this before he even thought about waking her. He pressed his fingers to the catheter and lashed it with surgical tape, and then he let himself look at her.

Really look at her.

His wife.

"Kate," he whispered, dragging his fingers through her hair. Knotted and grimy with thirteen days' hard survival. "Kate, love." His throat closed up and he ducked his head, closing his eyes to breathe. And then he got back to the job.

He fumbled at her clothes, dragged the remnants off her body and tossed them aside. He had clean clothes in the pack, a tshirt and a pair of loose knit sweats. Almost exactly what he'd picked out for her at the damn convenience store nearly two weeks ago, except this time he'd found black underwear that he knew she'd like.

Just in case. Just in case. God, she was here. She was alive. She was here.

He took in a ragged breath and slowly worked her legs into the material, kept the pants at her thighs so he could look at the bullet graze over her hip. He'd have to take the stitches out and redo them, most likely.

But for now, for now.

God, he didn't even know.

Castle pulled his dust-covered jacket off and dropped it near his pack and then he wrapped the sleeping bag over her and zipped it up, hunched against the rock wall to wait.

He cradled her hand in his lap, his fingers at her elbow to make sure none of the IV would leak out, and he waited.

He waited for her to wake up.

* * *

The darkness weighed down. Her body was a bruise, squeezed out and vivid.

All the world was a sharp ache. Cold so brittle her fingers broke.

A burn started in her arm and wouldn't release, shook its teeth in her and brought her up. There was a claw mark of light across her eyes and the brutal vision of a ghost.

She gasped and wrenched violently - _Wolf_ - and the noise came to her like growls, like animal sounds, like confusion until her brain which had refused her finally began to accept.

Accept him.

Holding her down.

"Castle," she rasped, eyes peeled back in darkness and the beam of a flashlight.

His face was shadows but his voice was steady. And his own. His. It was him. "Kate. Kate, hey there, love. Hey, it's okay. I got you."

Everything broke.

She couldn't move to reach for him, her body had no tears, but she wept in moans that racked her bones and curled her like a shriveling leaf. He gathered her up against his chest, warmth doubling between them, and she gripped his shirt to keep the vision real.

Let it be real.

"Castle."

"Oh, God, sweetheart, it's good to hear your voice."

She hurt too much to be dead.

* * *

Beckett was awake at least, but her silence was freaking him out. Her silence was deadly and he did everything he could to engage her, keep her with him, but it was like she had slipped off the edge of the world.

Still conscious but not quite... here.

"Hey, sweetheart," he murmured against her temple, her body half reclined over his. She was still wrapped in the cocoon of the sleeping bag but she wasn't shivering and her skin was like ice. "Kate, honey. Hey, I've got an IV running in this arm."

He traced his finger over the inside of her elbow so she could feel it, pressed his mouth into her forehead. He wanted to wash her hair with the stuff he'd brought - just army soap, nothing special - but he was afraid to move her too much right now.

Her stillness, her lack of response beyond that first panicked wake-up was worrying him.

"Feel that, love?" he said softly. "It's antibiotics and saline solution. Electrolytes basically. Your stomach won't be able to handle food or water right now, not after this long. I've got some vitamin shakes for later, when you can take it. Okay? We'll get you better. You're gonna be fine now. I've got you."

She suddenly twitched and shuddered, a ragged breath in her lungs that gave him a spark of hope. He loosened his hold on her and cradled the back of her neck, unzipped the sleeping bag a little more to make sure she wasn't getting feverish.

"Rick."

"Hey, hey, hey there," he said quickly, too quickly, grit his teeth to dial it down. Lack of stimulus in the darkest part of this cave meant even the flashlight might be too much for her. "Hey, Beckett. You waking up?"

She stirred and he felt movement under his fingers at her arm, slipped his hand down to hers. She squeezed weakly and her tongue darted out to her lips, eyes tracking to his face.

"Hey there. Yeah, that's it. How you feel, Beckett?"

"Shitty," she stuttered out.

He choked on a laugh and tilted his forehead down into hers, breathing hard, eyes closed. "Yeah. Yeah, love, I guess so."

"You?"

"Shit, I'm - Kate. God."

Her fingers twitched in his grasp and he brought the back of her hand to his lips, kissed her hard. He petted the side of her face, cradling her neck in the crook of his other arm, tried to keep from jostling her too hard with the erratic throb and pulse of his relieved heart.

"I thought you were - I didn't know where you were," he whispered. "I didn't know where you were."

He felt her fingers twitch against his cheek, the light glance of a nail. Her voice, when it came, was still so hoarse he barely recognized the words.

"Gonna sleep. Sorry. Gotta. . ."

"Sleep, sleep. You sleep, Kate." He rocked her slowly, sucking in deep breaths as something in him gave way, the terror and the hope, the horrific not knowing while being so very very sure.

She was alive. She was going to live. He had her now.

* * *

She woke to the heavy sensation of darkness.

And burning pain.

But the burning was nice. Burning for once, not the brutal cold. That could be good. That could be-

"Castle," she gasped, eyes flaring open. Real. He was real.

"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you. Changing your IV."

Was she in a hosp-

No. Darkness leached her vision like blood. She shivered and couldn't stop shivering, her teeth chattering so hard now she was afraid she'd bite her tongue, and Castle stopped and came closer, his hands caressing her face, her shoulders, her neck, stroking.

"Cold," she gasped out.

"I got you in a sleeping bag, and the warmers are shoved down at the bottom. Feel with your toes?"

She stared up at him, not comprehending - warmers? Why was he just hovering? "Crawl - crawl in with me," she stuttered out.

He let out a dark breath against her forehead, his kiss heavy, and she lifted a weak hand to his shirt, clung there. But he ripped out of her grasp too easily, like he was moving away.

"Castle," she called out, heard the breaking in her voice and closed her eyes.

"Kate. Kate, Kate-"

She opened them again and he sank down at her side, a rough exhalation at her cheek. She spread her fingers out along his jaw, wincing at the sharp sensation of uncut stubble.

She shuddered hard as the cold vibrated through her ribs like a breath, curled in around his bowed head. "Crawl in," she murmured, needing it. "Tired. Want to sleep."

"Yeah," he said, his voice a rough thing like his unshaven face. Everything too rough. "Yeah, I'm here."

He fumbled at the zipper and then he was crowding inside with her, an awkward and lumbering bear in her tent, but she couldn't move to put it right.

"Rick," she sighed out, heard the pleading in her voice that she couldn't fight.

He slipped an arm around her and brought her against him; she felt him shudder out and clutch her tighter, too tight, and she realized he'd been afraid to break her.

"Harder," she whispered instead. "So it's real. Let it be real."

"Kate," he cried then, his mouth open at her cheek, her jaw, like a grieving kiss. And then his body was wrapped around hers, fierce and unbroken, and she could melt against him and give it up.

He had her.

* * *

Castle kept awake, perched on one elbow to brush the hair back from her face and skim his fingers over the parts of her he could reach, not trusting that this was all that was wrong, this was it, dehydration and malnutrition and the fleshy tear in her arm.

He traced the ridge of her ribs and pushed two fingers into her abdomen, looking for internal bleeding, looking for broken bones, looking for anything that might sneak up on him and take her away.

She slept for a long time.

He couldn't rest.

He made himself leave the sleeping bag and crawl back out to the front of the cave, scan the night for enemies. The air was brutally cold and he'd left his insulated jacket back in the cave. This was what she'd dealt with every night for thirteen days, so he could damn well endure it for now. He slipped on the night vision goggles and did a quick perimeter check, and then he came back to the cave and crawled through once more, came to her side.

He shined the flashlight on the IV, the tubing, inspected the wound on her arm once more. Already it looked less puffy and raw, already it looked clean and healing. It gave him a moment's ease, a deeper breath.

Playing the beam slowly over her, he saw she had raw scrapes on her hands and forearms, as if from battle with scrub brush and rocks, falling or crawling. Her face was battered, but on its way to healing, so he guessed that was from the mortar shell thirteen days ago. The bruises under her eyes were malnutrition he thought, just as the hollow set to her cheeks and the jut of her jaw.

He reached out and slowly combed through her hair to that spot behind her ear. It felt mostly healed as well, but he didn't rule out bleeding, concussion, any of that. The light revealed a scab, clean skin, but he didn't know what it'd done to her. She'd spoken to him, seemed conscious and with it except when she wasn't, but he wanted to get her out of here as soon as possible.

Her skin was warming up again, a pink tint to her neck, and her fingers weren't blanched and purple at the nail beds any longer. He turned off the light and let them be plunged in darkness once more, but he could hear her breathing - slow and steady. He pressed his palm at her uninjured hip but the rise of bone there was chilled to the touch.

He didn't like that.

Castle shucked off his shoes even though it really wasn't a good idea - he should be battle ready, not crawling into bed with her. But he peeled off his socks as well, fumbled down at the bottom of the sleeping bag for one of the chemical warmers. He pulled it up and brought it against the other side of her, careful to keep it away from her skin, and laid his jacket over it. The insulation would warm up and spread through her. He hoped.

Castle slid back inside the sleeping bag with her and curled his arm under her neck to lay close, tight, sharing body heat but trying not to hurt her more. She was cool, despite the insulated bag, and he shifted closer to slide a leg over hers, stroke his bare toes against her calf. She let out a little sigh that made his heart falter, and then he gave it up and shifted until he was practically over her, kept her close, kept her safe, kept her warm.

He was perched on his elbows above her, crowding into her, his torso barely touching hers, his leg heavy between hers and then she was letting out a mewling noise and curling into him, some kind of dream or nightmare. He touched his cheek to hers at her shiver, laid on his side now and arranged her against him, where he wanted her to be anyway.

He felt the heat building in the small space, felt the way her body loosened up and relaxed deeper in sleep, deeper into him, and he let himself stay.

He didn't want to think about all the things that could go wrong, that could be wrong. He wanted to hold his wife again and know she lived.

* * *

She woke burning with thirst and croaked for water before she knew what she was, where. Everything was dark but a light switched on and made her flinch, a body pressed against hers, and she sucked in a breath and gripped the arm around her.

"Water?" he whispered.

"Yeah," she rasped, tried to clear her throat but there was nothing.

He was curling her upright and her body shuddered at the sudden cold, limbs withdrawing. She felt the bottle to her lips and went for it, but he held her down, held her back, and she choked on it.

"Don't swallow it, Kate. Swish it around in your mouth."

What the hell. She started to ignore him, swallow it all, but then the brutal memory of vomiting up the last mouthful she'd drunk came back to her in vivid and living color. She stopped and worked the water slowly through her mouth, hummed a question at him.

"Spit it back out," he said.

She felt him turning her away, but she didn't want to. She wanted to swallow it, wanted it so badly down her throat and filling the tight fist of her stomach.

She moaned and he pressed his fingers harder into her neck. "I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but do as I say. Remember the training."

Kate spat, let it all come dribbling out as she choked, her breath rattling through water now, the whole thing completely uncoordinated. She felt weak and shaky, she thought she'd fall apart if he weren't holding her together.

"Castle," she rasped.

"Give it a couple hours and then we can try it. Okay? I just don't think you have the energy to throw up right now."

Fuck, she didn't want to throw up at all; she wanted to bury her face in his clean shirt and feel the heat of him against her aching nose and cheeks and disappear.

"Come on, Kate," he murmured, drawing her back. "Warm you up again."

She curled her fingers at his neck and felt his shiver, but he was like a heating pad, like a furnace; he was warm enough to break apart the rigid knots of her muscles and the soothe the brittle set to her bones.

"Hey, you still with me?" he murmured.

She hummed something from her chest and pushed her tongue against the ache of her teeth in her mouth. "Here," she managed finally.

"Good. Good. Get some sleep then, Kate. We'll try a little bit of water when you wake."

"You stay," she got out, not sure if it was question or command.

"Not going anywhere," he whispered back, and his arms drew around her and laid her down in the sleeping bag again, warm and close.

It was going to be okay.

* * *

He slipped out when she was under again, tried to be certain she was deep enough asleep that jostling his way out of the sleeping bag wouldn't wake her. She was still in that recovery sleep mode, so he didn't expect nightmares or flashbacks of _whatever_ shit had happened out here, but he didn't want to be away from her for long.

He took the night vision goggles, leaving her the flashlight so she could see if she did happen to wake. He didn't want her to panic. Castle began to belly-crawl out of the tunnel, scraping over rock and shoving his shoulders past the tightest spots. He couldn't imagine her here, alone in the dark, searching for water and pushing past this, how claustrophobic it would've made him, how terrifying.

And yet she'd done it. Half sick with starvation and whatever had happened with that animal attack and she'd still found water.

She was fucking amazing was what she-

Castle went dead still, breath caught at the noise ahead of him.

Men moving. In the cave.

He should've known they'd come back eventually, start searching more thoroughly, but shit, this was not good timing.

The tunnel was defensible - only one guy could breach at a time and Castle could pick them off one by one - but Castle was currently _in_ the tunnel. And his gun was in his holster at his thigh and so not reachable in this position.

Shit.

How could he have let it get this far out of his control?

Yeah, actually, it'd been out of his control since the moment they'd stepped into that elevator going down into the underground facility. He'd had a terrible feeling and he'd known better, but he'd thought it was important to complete the mission, that it would somehow redeem Beckett's undercover experience with Vadim.

And now look where they were.

Fuck, at least they were together.

Castle let his breath out slowly and listened. He could hear sounds of troops and the scrape of gear on rock, but it didn't sound like a really thorough search. At least not yet. He'd have to figure out a way to hide this section of cave so that the entrance to their tunnel couldn't be seen.

Maybe a rockslide that he could dig them in and out of? Something.

When these guys were gone.

In the meantime, Castle slowly wormed his hand down to his thigh and began working at his holster, trying to get his Sig loose. He wasn't sure he even had the room to drag it up in front of him, but he felt better having his fingers on it.

He grunted under his breath as his knuckles scraped rock, but he kept working.

The Russian Army had invaded their hide-out and he had to protect her.


	9. Chapter 9

**Close Encounters 9**

* * *

She turned her head to the light and opened her eyes. Castle was shining, bare skin in the beam, dragging a collection of rocks in what looked like his tshirt. She closed her eyes and opened them again, but the sight was the same.

"Castle."

He dropped to a crouch and the rocks clunked heavily, but he came for her, hunched at her side with his fingers immediately at her face. "Hey, hey there. Much as it thrills me to hear it, gotta keep your voice down, sweetheart."

She swallowed slowly. "What're you doing?" she rasped.

"Making a blind at the entrance to this tunnel so it can't be seen. Russians were searching around."

"Been here a lot," she murmured, blinking her eyes at him and trying to lift her hand. He caught her fingers, kissed them, and she could feel the sweat at his neck and jaw, the work and effort.

"They've come through the cave too?"

"Mm. Must've taken the car before I could make it here."

"Yeah. Mitchell discovered they had it."

"Sorry."

He growled at her and his hand tightened around hers. "Don't _apologize_, Beckett. Shit," he said, and she saw him sway, collapse suddenly back to the rock floor and lift both hands to his face. "God, I thought you were gone."

She slowly pulled her knee to her chest and tried to rise, tried to get to him, but could only manage an awkward fall against his side, her one arm tethered to the IV hanging from a plastic stick, and her limbs shaky and uncontrolled.

But he unfolded from his brief break down, wrapped himself around her, and she breathed at his neck, closing her eyes and hanging on. "I thought you were dead," she said finally. "I was afraid it was for nothing."

"Kate," he ground out, but she knew. She knew.

He hated the decision she'd made, but he understood it - he'd have done the same.

"I know," she whispered, pressing her lips to his cheek, the warm and alive and present scent of him filling her up. Already she felt better, stronger, half-draped in his lap and comforting him instead of dwelling in the dark pain of her body.

Still it ached. It ached and she was getting light-headed and her throat was raw and she felt the strength drain right out of her and leak out onto the rock.

She shivered.

Castle cursed and drew her back down into the sleeping bag, tucked her inside once more, his fingers rough at the material and jerky across her shoulders, but so tender and infinitely careful when he touched her cheek.

"I gotta finish hiding us," he whispered. "And then I'll be back. You need to conserve your strength."

She unfurled her hand at his knee and blinked hard to keep from falling right off the edge into unconsciousness. "Castle."

"Yeah?"

"Doesn't begin to cover it - doesn't at all say everything - but I love you."

"Yeah," he whispered and dragged a kiss across her eyelid that had her tumbling towards sleep. "Yeah, sweetheart, I know."

* * *

He surveyed the piled rocks from the main cavern, and it looked like a cave-in had shut off this end. It wasn't pretty, and he knew he'd shift it the moment he crawled back through it, but he thought it would work. The Russian scouts hadn't been looking too hard back here, so he didn't think they'd notice a difference.

Castle went back to the mouth of the cave and squatted down, crab walked towards the stunted growth of trees just outside. He had the night vision goggles, but dawn had peered a lazy lid up over the horizon; the ragged gray light was sobering.

Uh-oh. He sucked in a breath as he came out into the open, quickly jerked back.

The Russian Army had camped out at their front door.

Damn it.

He had survival supplies for four days, no more. He'd had to pack light for himself because of all the medical gear, and he wasn't going to risk her health by putting her on rations. Meant they had to be on their way in four days or they'd be in trouble. He'd be endangering her life if they weren't one hundred percent on schedule.

Castle slinked back to the cave and inside, made his way towards the back where the tunnel branched off. He had a moment's doubt when the shadows skewed, and then he realized it had worked.

The rocks had done their job. Shit, look at that.

Castle laughed to himself and ran his fingers over the warped vision; it resolved only at his touch, allowing him to see the rocks for what they were - merely a blind.

He crawled in, shifting the stones as he went and replacing them once he got past the scree, trying to be quiet. He felt better as he made his way through the narrowest part, came back out into the blue light of his flashlight and the still sleeping Kate.

It was going to be okay; they were hidden and safe for now. She was still on IVs and would be for the next 36 hours. He'd counted on having to triage her in the field so she would be stable enough to get her out of here, and he'd build a travois and drag her out of the damn country if he had to.

Maybe she could walk in the next day and a half. Yeah, shit, knowing Beckett - she'd be up on her feet the moment he took the IV out. This was going to work; it could still be done. Forget the Russian Army; they were safe for now. He'd cross that bridge when they came to it.

Suddenly, he was so damn tired.

He'd spent the last thirteen days in the hospital, had nearly lost his leg, had been heavily sedated for most of that time, and then he'd just jogged halfway across the Russian steppe, and now he was feeling every last mile, every hollow day.

Castle stood in the dim cavern and stared down at Beckett curled on her side under the sleeping bag.

He sighed and crawled in.

* * *

She listed into the palm at her cheek, closed her eyes as his fingers skimmed the knot behind her ear.

"Tell me," he said and it wasn't a question.

"Thought you'd ask about this one first," she murmured, half-lifting her ragged forearm.

"This happened first though, didn't it?" he said back, still warm at the side of her face.

Kate leaned heavier into his side, grateful that when she'd woken from a dark nothing and said she had to sit up, she couldn't lie down a second longer, he hadn't even argued. He'd just situated them both against the rock wall and arranged her at his side like he had when she'd been recovering from a bullet wound to the back.

At least they already knew how to do this dance.

"After the mortar shell, I couldn't find you. Not at first," she said softly, her eyes opening again to stare at nothing. The flashlight was off. "When I did, your leg was drenched, weeping blood. I made a tourniquet, didn't seem to even help, and then I called for the chopper to come get you. But the moment the emergency was over, I could feel it."

"Concussion. Once I was gone you mean."

"Think so," she said to that. His quiet was something to take note of, pay attention to, because it meant his anger was compacting tight in his chest. She had to pitch it just right, explain it in a certain slant of light. "I was symptomatic."

"Dizziness. Disorientation. Headaches-"

"Threw up a few times," she admitted. Might as well. He seemed dead-set on hearing the worst of it. "Couldn't walk a straight line. So yeah, this was the mortar shell."

She didn't continue the story; she wouldn't. Not now. This was their game, comparing scars, and the rules were clear.

"This?" she murmured, her hand going to his thigh pressed against hers, seeking the wound.

"Yeah. Healed now but I nearly lost the leg. Blood poisoning and shrapnel. They put me under heavy sedation to keep me from pushing it too far."

For her. To come after her. She knew that too, knew what he didn't say just as clearly as he must know what she hadn't said either. How the concussion made her easy prey for the Russian scouts, made it difficult to evade, how she'd had to hole up rather than hike back to the car immediately and drive over the border like they'd planned.

"All right, now this," he said then. His fingers cupped her elbow and he angled her arm towards him.

"It was a wolf," she answered. "He was hurt. Two of us, wounded predators. He followed me thinking the moment I went down, he'd take me."

"Where's the wolf now?" he growled. It was throwaway male posturing; it was Castle being the furious and ultimately impotent man, but she actually had an answer for that.

"A Russian scout party shot him."

"Oh," he startled out, and his thumb was too tight against her elbow. "Oh, Kate."

She shook her head to keep him from seeing it. "I - he saved my life twice. Three times, actually."

"How's that?" he whispered, his voice gentle now, his touch like silk, cradling her against him.

"When he attacked me, he didn't go for a kill - he was just testing. The wound is shallow. He wanted to know how much of a threat I was. But it got me moving. It made me move - made me come back here. Where I should've been heading the whole time, but I was - not doing so good."

She could feel the stillness in him, that deadly rage even at her carefully worded explanation.

"That's one," he grunted.

"Two was the Russian scout party. They heard me, I guess, and came to investigate, saw the traces I'd left. But when Wolf showed up, they said it must have been him. Not a human. So they shot him."

"Kate," he sighed out and his fingers stroked around the bandage. "And three?"

This had gone too far past their usual story-telling; this was revealing more than he should hear. But she answered anyway. "Three," she said softly. "I ate Wolf. Didn't have an easy time of it but he kept me here."

"Oh, Kate, love," he sighed out, his arm at her neck and bringing her close. "Kate. You named him."

She had? She had.

She looped her IV-trailing arm around his neck and curled in tighter, shutting her eyes hard.

"Oh, sweetheart, I wish you'd never been here. I wish it had never come to this."

She wished she would stop seeing Wolf die, long and drawn out, his body leaking life back to the rocks. She wished he hadn't looked so much like her wolf-dog at home, that the knowledge in those eyes, even though dark and wild, hadn't been so very like Sasha's.

She wished a damn wild animal hadn't caused so much stupid trauma.

"I want to go home," she said finally. "I just want our home."

"Me too," he whispered at her ear. "That's why I had to come. It's not home without you."

She choked on a sob and untangled her hand from the IV line, wrapped her arms around him.

Castle shuddered and dropped his forehead to her shoulder. "I'm so tired, Kate. I'm so - it's too much. I can't-"

"I'm gonna be okay," she promised him then, cradling his cheeks and easing away from him, trying to guide him down to the sleeping bag. "I'll be fine. You found me. You have me."

He came with her, and this time she was the one to arrange the sleeping bag around them, to tuck him in close and brush reassuring hands over his back.

He let out a long sigh at her neck. "Therapy bill is gonna be enormous."

She chuckled lightly at that, let it lift them both.

* * *

She'd fallen asleep before he could, and so Castle drifted on an alternating current of sharp awareness and drugging nothing. He thought maybe the last few days' grueling pace had caught up to him - now that she was mostly out of the woods, now that she didn't need him to put the pieces back together, now that his forward momentum was blocked by the Russians camped outside the door.

He was forced to stay still and it was letting his body scream at him.

He was so damn tired.

He saw visions of wolves when he let himself go under, not even his own nightmare, but the animal gleam of their eyes, the bared teeth. He saw Kate as he'd found her, splayed and unnatural, unconscious, barely with him. He woke and had to blink hard to get the images out from behind his lids.

He kept his gaze firmly on Kate curled into him, tried to ignore the way his pulse sped and floundered with the force of this emotional breakdown - whatever it was that was going on.

He had her; she was here. But he found himself cracking - the core of him was chipping off at the edges, fraying like he was made of cheap stuff.

And maybe he was. Maybe when it came down to it, he couldn't survive this any more.

Couldn't survive her.

Castle cupped the side of her face, his hand so wide it splayed at her neck as well, and he brought himself closer, ever closer - it was the only thing he knew to do.

He had to have her. Nothing made sense without her here.

* * *

When she woke, Castle was asleep, his hands tangled in her hair.

Ug, her disgusting, gross - she felt like she needed five hours in a hot bath and the world's supply of soap. She was damp with perspiration now too, warmer than she'd ever thought possible, and the mix of sick, sweat, grime, and - survival...

She needed to get clean. Had to.

Kate lifted a hand under his and gently unsnarled his fingers from her hair, working it one by one until she could move his arm away. He didn't even stir, and she wondered how much he'd pushed himself, how fine he really was, how healed.

Later.

Kate drew her knees up under her and pushed up on her hands, waiting there a moment. The IV was still attached, and that wasn't ideal, but she wasn't stupid enough to take it out. She'd just have to go slowly. She had all day. Night? She had no idea the hour, what _day_, and it was time to get back to the land of the living.

Be part of this. Be his partner in this.

Kate swallowed and licked her lips, thought about water. That's what she wanted first. Water and then a chance to clean some of the grit off of her. She wondered what he had in his pack.

As she crawled carefully towards his stuff, her heart beat a mad and furious tattoo against her ribs, reminding her of how precarious this was, how on the brink.

She stopped when she got to the bag, leaned back against the rock to catch her breath, close her eyes. Just a second. Just a second to get everything gathered up...

She might have passed out.

She had. Kate groaned softly and stirred, realized her hand was gripping the strap of his pack and twisted in it, her arm throbbing funny from where she'd slumped against the rock. She felt the ache in her hips once more and shifted her feet, tried not to wake Castle.

He was still out. Huh. He'd needed the sleep then.

She checked the IV and found it still secure, the pole and bag at her side. She somehow managed not to knock it over when she'd fallen unconscious.

All right. Okay, no damage done. But she knew better now.

Kate dragged the pack closer to her and opened the flap, unzipped the main compartment. When she looked inside, she had to smile - the neat and orderly way he packed could never be mistaken.

She started going through his provisions, trying to calculate how much they had, how much they could survive on. Where her own limits would be. She had nothing in reserves, her charge was still in the red despite the IV nutrients, and she couldn't imagine crawling through that tunnel let alone hiking back to whatever transport he had.

Did he have transport at all? They needed to talk about this stuff.

And to do that, she needed to know what their situation looked like. Provisions. How much food, how long would it last - these were the things she could see Castle keeping from her, trying to protect her.

She started going through it slowly, taking stock.

* * *

His wife was huddled against the rock wall when he woke again, the pack in her lap. She had a blank look to her eyes that he didn't understand, didn't like.

Castle groaned at the feeling of heaviness in his body - meant his sleep had been long - and tried to gauge her mood.

She came right out with it, her voice dull. "You brought... a lot of morphine."

He frowned. "Yeah."

"A lot."

"In case," he said with a shrug, but he felt the burning in his chest that climbed to his throat. He didn't want to think what the morphine had been for.

"In case I was-" She stopped and her fingers drifted over the vials and then she closed up the case and snapped it shut, like she was ruling it out forever.

He shifted upright and sank against the rock beside her. "Soon as you can; we'll get out of here."

"Wanted out of here days ago," she said quietly.

"Yeah." Inane talk, but he didn't have words for how twisted up he was, how tight everything felt with the idea of losing her.

Being helpless to get to her. And she'd done that. She'd put him in a chopper with his father to save his life; she'd made the exact same decision he'd have made for her - though not if his father was at the controls. He-

"Stop thinking so hard," she said then. "Only makes you crazy."

"Yeah," he said again, nodding. He felt her fingers come to his shoulder. Her touch was cool, still not the warmth he wanted for her, but it felt good on his overheated skin.

"Thank you for coming back for me," she said.

He growled out a response, something more miserable than he intended to let her know, and he wrapped his arms around her and drew her into his lap. He buried his mouth at her hair and sucked in a long breath.

"Thank you for not giving up," he muttered back. For not needing the morphine, for not making him have to do that, kill her kindly.

"I just didn't want to leave you alone," she whispered. "I couldn't bear to leave you alone."

* * *

Her fingers trembled around the bottle and she felt ridiculous because he had to help her. The water sloshed cool and beautiful down her throat and she grunted when he took it away, drew the rim from her lips.

"Hey," she protested.

"Not too much, Kate."

She sighed as he withdrew the bottle and twisted the cap on it, her eyes tracking its movements a little too much for her own liking. She was dying of thirst-

Okay. Okay, well.

Kate licked her lips and swallowed, let out a slow breath.

"How you doing?" he asked quietly, his shoulder at hers, propping her up.

"Um." She was concentrating hard on not disgorging the whole contents of one measly swallow of water, and that sucked. That sucked.

"Don't fight it if it comes."

"Yeah, cause that's so attractive," she muttered, closing her mouth tight after the words escaped.

"Well, I gotta admit, the emaciated look does not do it for me, Beckett, but the cave is dark enough that just hearing your voice..."

She let out a startled laugh at that, slid her hand over his thigh to find his. His fingers laced between hers, close knit and together, and his chin came down on top of her head.

Her stomach was quivering with it, this alien thing water, and she closed her eyes to keep her focus. Just breathe. She had to be drinking those shakes he'd brought by the end of this day if they were ever going to make it with the provisions he had.

"Kate," he said on a sigh. "Don't think so hard, remember?"

She let out the breath she'd been holding and squeezed his hand, fingers flexing around his. He was right. She was going to psych herself out if she kept on like this.

"You have crackers?" she asked then. "I could do that. It might help to have... an anchor."

"Not according to all the training-"

"Castle," she said slowly. "Crackers."

He shifted beside her and then his hand went through the pack. She'd only gotten so far on cataloguing their stores before she'd run up against the wall of all that morphine.

What he'd had to think about to be prepared for this, what grim scenarios he'd envisioned while he was out there. The worst was always not knowing. At least she'd _known_ the extent of his injuries, she'd known he had his father and the CIA behind him.

She'd had nothing. And he'd known only that.

The crackers were stale when he handed them over to her; she let out a little sigh and broke one in half, stuck it on her tongue.

Her saliva started so fast that it flooded her mouth, made her eyes water. She brought the cracker to her hard palatte and let it stay there a moment, tried to gauge the results on her stomach.

Okay so far. She bit into the already dissolving cracker, felt the sharp sting of salt on her tongue, tasted the burst of intense flavor.

Shit, it was just a cracker.

Castle cupped her neck, stroked her cheek, murmuring things to her she couldn't hear over the sudden surge of sensation. His fingers were gentle at her nose, swiping under her eye, and she realized - horrifyingly - she was crying.

She was crying.

But she wasn't throwing up.

* * *

"You got this?" he said softly to her. It was dark because he'd doused the flashlight, but he felt her nod against his shoulder.

"But maybe I can lie down now," she whispered back.

"Yeah, yeah, of course," he said quickly, snagging the rest of the cracker from her hand - she'd pushed it and eaten one and a half, the other half stalling out before she got it to her lips.

Castle pushed the sleeve of crackers back into his pack and helped her ease down into the sleeping bag, his palm trapped under her cheek for an instant before he slid it out. She sighed and curled her knees to her chest.

"Where you going?"

"Perimeter check."

"Mm, kay." Her eyes were closing; he could feel her lashes brush the side of his wrist as he moved away.

"Be right back, sweetheart."

"Better be. Gonna fall asleep."

"Good, good. You sleep." He waited a moment more until he thought she was truly on her way to unconsciousness, and then he got to his feet with the flashlight. He shuffled a few steps away and flipped the light on, used the beam to mentally navigate his steps, and then he turned it off again.

He left the flashlight at her side and started forward in the darkness, moving with sure steps across the even floor and towards the tunnel. If something happened to him, he wanted her to be able to have everything right at hand.

The crawl through the tunnel seemed even more narrow than he remembered but he knew it was whatever near-mental breakdown he was having and attempting to stave off. Beckett eating a cracker had helped a little, honestly, but dropping right back to sleep after didn't exactly boost his confidence in phase three of this mission.

Phase three being - get Beckett the hell out of Russia.

Castle smacked his forehead against the rock blind, cursed to himself as he felt the puncture in the darkness. It was bleeding too.

Damn it. Pay attention.

He started shifting rocks, listening in between each movement to be certain no one was on the other side, and then he was scraping through the opening and crawling out into the cave.

It was full dark now, sometime in the deepest part of the night. He'd slept the whole day. Fuck.

Castle gripped the night goggles and put them on over his head, wincing when the band abraded his cut cheek. He moved towards the entrance and went through on his belly, scanned the dark world.

He could see the Russian guards stationed along the edge of the base camp but after he watched for a few minutes, he was fairly certain they could avoid them and slip away when it came time. He used the magnification lens and focused in on the center of things, searching for a commander, trying to make the green flares of heat out into something he could understand.

He felt better after having slept, true enough. The fierce pain behind his eyes had dulled. But his eyes were still unsteady, like they wobbled in their sockets, and only when he'd closed them to sleep had he realized how much they burned.

When he was satisfied that they were safe for the night, he crawled back into the cavern and moved to the back and the loose pile of rocks.

Castle paused there a moment and sat down hard at the lip of the manmade scree, felt his chest tightening and his breath coming too fast. He ripped the night vision goggles off his head and pressed his palm to his eyes, choking it down, trying not to break.

Thirteen days and he felt like the oldest man in the world.

He couldn't carry her out of here, even though he'd damn well die trying.

God, help him. He couldn't-

Castle gave up pretending and let himself crack. Straight down the middle. Shuddering and heaving with it, hands pressed tightly to his eye sockets.

At least he was on the other side of the rock. At least she was asleep and didn't have to hear him lose it.


	10. Chapter 10

**Close Encounters 9**

* * *

Kate woke fast, her breath punctuated by the pounding of her head and the thrum of panic. She was cold but sweating, her skin chilled but her hair and neck soaked with it. She couldn't orient, couldn't understand, and she needed Castle.

Or Castle needed...

Kate flung out a hand and winced as her knuckles scraped rock and found the flashlight. She flipped it on and sucked in a breath but it wouldn't come, even with the light, all the beautiful blue light like the moon; it wasn't helping.

A sharp ache in her breast seemed to travel straight like a blade into her heart and out of her back - the scar. The scar. From the bullet in the cemetery years ago.

Beckett groaned out and flopped onto her back, panting, swallowing it down, but it wasn't right, it wasn't _real_. It was phantom pain, an ache being pushed off on her, not her own.

She didn't understand.

"Castle," she groaned and rolled to one elbow, tried to get up.

She swayed when she sat upright but the sudden growl of her belly made her drag herself towards his pack. She found the sleeve of saltine crackers and shoved one into her mouth, still pushing past the strange knife in her chest, the haunting.

She swallowed it down and got to her knees; she didn't think it was a hot idea to stand, so she crawled forward instead, the flashlight still perched on the sleeping bag and illuminating the way like a blue path.

She needed water. But. He needed... she thought only that she had to get to him. Nothing else made sense.

"Castle," she called out, heard the heavy rasp of her voice and the fault lines running through it, couldn't make her throat work past the dry taste of cracker.

God, she was starving. Starving. She wanted to put her mouth on something and swallow and-

Shit, she was dizzy. And that sounded lewd even in her head, but the intensity of the feeling, the _craving_, was the same. It was everything. Castle would know.

"Castle," she called again. She slumped against the side of the cave wall, peered down into the tunnel. She could see the blue light shining strangely inside and the sudden jut of shadows.

She stared and the wave of need didn't recede; it only surged around her, buoying her higher, stronger, until she fucking well might crawl down that tunnel herself and drag him back so he could _feed_ her.

There was nothing. She didn't know. This was like the night she woke at Stone Farm and knew she had to stay awake, keep watch for him, knew he needed something from her even though she'd been completely and utterly alone.

He'd come back a few days later, bruised ribs and a bullet graze on his forearm. She'd lain awake the whole night willing him home.

It was that. It was that now.

_Come home, Castle._

The rocks shifted and tumbled; she heard their clatter and echo down the tunnel and she waited there, breathing shallowly past the ache in her back where the bullet had gone in - a long arrow of ache straight to her heart.

It was a feeling like needing him but it went the other direction. Outward instead of in. She didn't understand it, only that she couldn't fall back asleep.

And lurking underneath that was the sensation of hunger. Immediate and vital. Present in a way it hadn't been in days.

She should've taken the crackers with her.

"Castle," she murmured and watched his slow progress through the scree of rocks.

* * *

Castle pushed through the tunnel and fell over Beckett, stumbling in surprise and trying to catch her - himself - both of them before they wound up tangled.

Didn't happen. She landed on top of him and his breath went out in a rush. She was staring down at him with a strange glow in her eyes that he couldn't quite attribute to the eery beam of the flashlight.

"Beckett?"

"I'm starving," she murmured and her head tilted. "What's wrong?"

"What?" He moved to try to gently put her off of him but she slipped her legs between his and anchored herself there.

"Two separate things. I'm not sure which one woke me. What's wrong with you?"

"Wrong with me?" he echoed and felt the tightness cramp in his chest all over again, the wince of not enough air.

"Castle," she said, and this time even though her voice was thin, she had a layer of authority that made him lie still under her. She didn't keep prying, she didn't say more, she just studied him. And it felt like she could see everything.

How he was ruined by this. How it was just... more than he could bear. The load was too great and his support pillars had crumbled to dust and the suspension cables had snapped and he was going to fucking pitch carloads of innocent lives into the bay.

"Kate," he said raggedly and closed his eyes to keep her from seeing it.

Her mouth was soft over his, a warm and fluid thing that made him gasp and open for her. Her tongue slipped along his bottom lip and she tasted like salt, necessary and saving, and he couldn't even do anything to help, could only lie there while she breathed life back into this wreckage of himself.

He found his hands traveling slowly from her hips to her thighs, up over her ass to her lower back, skimming his fingers along her ribs to avoid the worst of the scratches, moving up and up until the bruising angle of her bones under her too-thin skin was supplanted by the delicate wisp of her hair at his palms and the harsh relief of her jaw working against his mouth.

He framed her face with his hands and kissed her, artless but soft, their touches of lips and tongue like it was all for the first time.

"Rick," she breathed out.

And even though it leaked out of his eyes like grief it was only an abiding and all-consuming gratitude. She broke from his mouth and licked the salt from his cheeks and hummed as she sucked on his skin. And then she said-

"Feed me, Castle. I'm serious. I'm so hungry."

He laughed, rich and deep, and he had to cup the back of her head to keep his mirth from shaking her right off.

God, he loved her. He loved her.

Everything was going to be fine.

* * *

She folded another cracker into her mouth before Castle got a chance to take them away, but she seemed to ignore the raised eyebrow because she swallowed it down anyway.

It shouldn't be so erotic to watch her eat crackers. It was bordering on pornographic - the moans, the way she licked the salt from her lips, her long fingers around the food. He knew it was mostly just more of the natural high of seeing her on the road to recovery, seeing her gaining ground, but damn, it was making him crazy.

"That was fantastic," she sighed and dropped her head to his shoulder. "It's obscene how much I love those crackers. I'm gonna have _dreams_, Castle."

"You're funny." Like he wasn't going to have dreams about her eating them.

"It's like the ice machine. Remember that thing?"

He chuckled and stroked the side of her face, palmed her cheek when she stirred and oriented to his touch like a cat. "I remember," he said quietly.

"I really loved that ice machine. Made everything blissful."

"Uh-huh," he smiled.

And then the soft silence was punched flat by her next words, out of nowhere. "You know it was all completely out of your control, Rick. And I understand hating that. I understand how that makes you feel so - desperate."

He went still, heart pounding suddenly again.

She curled into him, fingers spreading out along his shirt. "Since we're a long way from Dr King and I think this has to be said anyway - you know I had to do it. I had to. You were going to die. And whatever possible outcome awaited me here, yours was certain. I couldn't, Rick. I couldn't. And you know better than to ever ask me to choose differently."

"I know," he admitted, his voice like gravel. "I know."

She sucked in a long, shaky breath and nodded against him. "I'm so tired. I wore myself out with those crackers."

He held up the water and she waved it off, apparently knowing her limits. For once.

"Okay, sweetheart. You should sleep."

"You should too. I want you to lie with me."

He gave a breath of a laugh at the way that sounded, but she was running her hand lightly over his thigh and tripping up to press her cold fingers under his shirt, his abs rippling at the sensation. It was almost too much.

"Kate."

"Lie with me. Like at Stone Farm."

"Okay, okay," he murmured, giving in immediately.

"Skin," she insisted.

Castle huffed out a breath - it was damn cold in these caves - but he knew the sleeping bag would amplify their heat and give it back to them, wrap them in it. So he eased her back against the rock and grabbed the hem of his t-shirt, pulled it up over his head.

She hummed and smiled at him, that pleased and possessive lilt to her tone, and he only rolled his eyes at her and worked on getting his pants off.

"Please tell me you went commando," she said archly.

"You're naughty. But you're also _weak_. As a day old kitten, Beckett. So knock it off."

"A kitten," she muttered, wrinkling her nose at him. He batted her hands away when she tried to remove her own clothes, doing it for her. It was a statement about how tired she was that she let him, or else she was buttering him up for getting away with bigger indecencies later.

Yeah, look at that. She was already stroking her fingers at his hip, running along the waistband of his boxer briefs. She wanted to torment him all night?

Fine.

He'd take it like a man. He was just glad she was here to do it.

Castle opened up the sleeping bag and maneuvered her into it, and then he slid down beside her. He got an arm under her shoulders and pulled her over onto his chest; she was sighing out and straddling his thigh, her arms curled in at his ribs, and her eyes falling shut in moments.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead, her greasy and unwashed hair, and then he wrapped his arms around her loosely and zipped them up in their cocoon.

He thought this time they might emerge a little stronger for it.

* * *

She woke lazily, realized most of her time was spent coming and going from sleep. Kate turned slowly onto her back and craned her neck to see him beside her. He was watching her, a thoughtfulness on his face that meant he wanted to talk.

"I'm awake." It was permission for him to go ahead. She could talk; talking was maybe the only thing she could do right now.

"We've never had a first date," he said. He didn't look sad, just aware.

"No," she answered. "You're wrong. We have."

"When?"

Kate grinned and lifted her hand between them; he did the same and their fingers slid together, stroking and touching, not quite clasped. "Remember when you abducted me from the road and I said I'd seen you following me?"

"Yeah."

"You were in Remy's," she probed. "At least twice. Maybe three times."

"Yeah," he admitted. His fingers danced with hers, like a thumb war, tangling and snarling, coming apart only to draw back together.

She watched their hands. "It was you," she said again. "You paid my tab. Paid for my dinner and all the lunches and dinners I'd had for... months."

"Yeah," he grinned. "That was me."

"Why?"

He sighed and seemed to search for words, fingers not settled, stroking along her palm. "Because..."

But she knew. She'd felt it in that interrogation room when he'd slipped behind her and uncuffed her wrists, stroked his fingers at her skin.

She hummed. "That was our first date, Castle. You bought me dinner. What a gentleman."

He was smiling now and his fingers laced through hers and held on.

* * *

"I should've gotten you stuff."

"What stuff?" she murmured. He could hear the edge of sleep on her voice.

"You know. Stuff. Flowers. Chocolates. Do it like you're supposed to."

"I don't think so," she sighed. Her body turned into his and laid along their joined arms. "You gave me lots of phones."

He laughed. "Not exactly the same."

"You gave me a white iphone case when I was stuck at the Farm. Remember? It sparkled."

He frowned. "Yeah, but..."

"But you were trying to appease me. I know. I still liked it. It was sweet."

"It wasn't appeasement. Okay, a little bit. I didn't mean for it to be appeasement, but that was back in my bullying days."

She grinned against his skin - he could feel it, feel her teeth press at his shoulder and the little laugh she held back. He could almost hear her say it before she said it.

"Castle, sweetheart, you're still a bully."

"But I'm trying."

"You are at that." She was snuggling at him now, breaking the clasp of their hands to stroke up along his sternum and hook her fingers at his shoulder. "You try for me. That's all I need."

"But maybe flowers."

She laughed then. "Okay. Fine. Get me flowers when we get home."

"I will. Purple ones. You like purple."

"Orchids," she hummed.

"I see. Expensive flowers." He was grinning now. "Anything else, baby?"

She had that drifting quality to her voice now. "Strawberry milkshakes. I've been dreaming about strawberry milkshakes."

"Actually."

She lifted her head from his chest and he could've sworn he saw the bright gleam of her eyes even in the darkness.

"Actually?"

"The nutrition supplements I brought. They're strawberry flavored shakes."

"Oh my God."

He would laugh except the desperate relief in her voice sounded too real, too raw, too pathetic. It made his chest ache. He lifted up onto one elbow and checked the time on his watch. Three in the morning but what did it matter? She'd eaten a handful of crackers and seemed to be settled.

"Want one now?"

"Castle," she gasped.

"Yeah. Okay. Let's make you one."

He reached out in the pitch black of the cave just so he'd know where she was, where not to move and accidentally hit her, and his fingers skimmed her neck and felt it wet.

"Kate," he whispered.

"I'm okay," she choked. "I'm okay."

She was crying.

* * *

Somehow he knew - of course, how could he not know? with her unable to stop crying even as she sucked slowly at the foil package. Not even a straw and it smelled like metal and tasted like iron, but she put her mouth to the hole he'd punched into the pack and she drank a strawberry milkshake as he held her.

That she needed him to keep her upright, that she couldn't do much more than lean into his chest and let the wet warmth slide down her cheeks - it galled her. But she wasn't going to stop to have a tantrum over her weakened condition. Nothing she could do about being so broken that the tears didn't even have a point.

His wide palm was heavy at the back of her neck, his body bowed over hers, and she felt the fingers of his other hand wiping the tears off her cheeks, skimming the moisture from her neck where it pooled.

He didn't say, _Why are you crying? _He didn't say, _you'll get dehydrated if you don't stop._ He didn't say anything at all, but he kept up with the tears and made sure she had his strength because hers was well and truly gone.

When she couldn't keep the milkshake at her mouth anymore, she rested against him, her arms curled up at her chest and her eyes closed, and he touched her. Fingers at her cheeks, her jaw, her neck, drying her off and loving her and understanding.

She was okay; she really was. Just something about the fact that he'd brought her strawberry milkshakes every time, that he'd thought of it here too - not just the doses of morphine and the medical supplies and the specific rations and the heavy insulated sleeping bag - but the things specifically for her.

For his wife. Strawberry flavored nutrition shakes. The inside lining of the sleeping bag was purple. Her t-shirt was white, which he knew she liked because he wore all black and the dynamics of that had always been unspoken but so present. And her underwear. She'd commented about the granny panties he'd gotten her last time in Russia and this time he'd brought her some that were very nearly the same as her favorites at home.

He did those things. Who needed gifts when he was always so relentlessly detailed when it came to her?

"Staying down?" he murmured.

She nodded but handed over the package still two-thirds full. "Can't fit anymore."

He gave a little puff of laughter as he took it from her. "In your stomach you mean?"

"Yeah." She curled in closer, warming her chilled fingers against his skin. "Yeah. I'm tired."

"Yeah, I know," he murmured. "Let me wrap this up and we can try it again later."

She hummed agreement and let out a slow breath, the way her belly filled and churned but stayed. It stayed. It was okay. She'd be okay.

She felt him moving against her, doing everything with one hand as he held her at his chest, and she let him. She just let him because she was so very tired and now full too, she was full and her body didn't know what to do with it, and she wanted to lie down.

And then she was, his warmth carrying her down and holding her gently, carefully, not jostling her, and she curled on her side and had him at her back, his arm for a pillow, and her mouth open at his skin still tasting the faint and beautiful flavor of strawberries.

"Sleep, love," he murmured, and she obeyed.

* * *

He left her in the cavern to do a security check just before dawn; the air was crisply cold and stung his eyes as he strained to see through the thin darkness. The Russians were up and moving but not dismantling camp, just preparing for another day's drills and searches.

He and Beckett would have to stay put for another day, most likely. He didn't like having the Army at his doorstep, having no recourse if they came looking, but there was next to nothing he could do about it. Just hole up and focus on Beckett.

Castle went to the bathroom in the deep shadows under the tree, kicked some dirt over the spot just in case. The scent would keep away other wild animals as well, hopefully, and-

Beckett. Oh, jeez. He hadn't even _asked_. After the shake last night and drinking some water, even those crackers, her stomach had to be ripped out, her whole body out of whack. He had to figure out a safe place, give her some privacy - there was no way in hell she was letting him hover over her while she went to the bathroom.

Damn it. The Russians were going make this next to impossible.

He slipped back inside the main cavern and began exploring the back walls, wondering if there was another tunnel that might split off from here that she could use for facilities. He had no luck though, his fingers just ran over rough rock and jagged edges.

Maybe in their hideout.

Castle went back through the tunnel, belly crawling over the rockslide he'd piled up, replacing it stone by stone until he was sure it would pass the test. He had to hunch his shoulders as he pushed forward and then he was back in the faint blue glow from the flashlight.

He'd left it on because he'd felt this irrational urge to not come back to darkness. He moved towards Kate quietly and picked up the torch, shined the beam slowly around the smaller cavern.

It actually looked more like a basin, a widening of the tunnel he'd come through. Perhaps because of the stream that pushed up out of the ground and ran a few feet before disappearing again. Over the eons it had carved out this space from rock, creating a natural shelf where Beckett now lay.

If that was the case, then the tunnel might go on from here, hidden in the dark corners or by the strange cast of shadows. Castle started at the opposite end from the main tunnel and began inspecting the walls.

He doubted Beckett had gotten much farther than the water when she'd crawled back here, so there just might be something to discover.

* * *

Beckett closed her eyes for a breath, a heartbeat really, but he called out to her in that hesitating space.

"Beckett?"

"Yeah," she said. She was sitting up against the wall while Castle explored the rock for openings. She was trying to mentally prepare herself for using the bathroom outside with his bristling concern right at her back - ug, disgusting - but more than that, she was trying not panic about the fact that, right now, she had absolutely no urge to go at all.

Couldn't, in fact, remember the last time she had. That couldn't be good.

"Beckett, you awake?"

"Yeah, I'm awake," she replied.

"Keep talking."

They'd turned the flashlight off to conserve the batteries and because, as she'd pointed out, the beam only made the shadows all the more confusing. She realized now that the thin edge of worry in his voice wasn't actually for her.

Not entirely.

He didn't like being in the dark.

When had _that_ happened?

"Kate," he insisted, his voice low.

"Yeah, I'll keep talking," she said. "Um, oh, I know. I'll tell you a story."

"A dirty story."

She let a laugh pop out of her mouth even though she'd fully expected him to say that. But he wanted to hear her, he wanted her presence with him, and she understood the need.

Maybe it wasn't so much the dark as the not being able to see her.

"Not a dirty story. Not until I can do something about it."

"Darn."

"When I was at Stone Farm after I got shot-"

"I don't know that I like these stories."

"You will. Hush. Let me tell it."

"Fine."

She could hear the scrape of his foot about six feet from her, hear the water moving through its little bed of rock. She liked it, this intimate and close darkness, their breathing in overlapping patterns.

"I read the letter that you wrote me in my detective's notebook."

"Hmm, yeah. I remember that."

"I read it that day you stayed. After the hayloft."

A chuckle came out of the black, a pleased laugh that made her warm. She smiled in memory as well. "I will always remember that hayloft."

"It was what I needed. Maybe you did too, I don't know-"

"Had been needing it for a while. Needing you."

She grinned and smothered it against her hand, tried not to feel so cocky about it. Failed. She loved that they both just sometimes fell apart with it, needing, wanting. Sometimes it didn't matter how awful the day had been or how broken the other person was, sometimes that connection was imperative simply because of those things.

"Keep talking to me, sweetheart."

She startled out of memories and realized she was drifting, her mind still not quite able to hold her here. She should probably drink more of the shake since the IV would run out today. She should probably work harder to focus.

"Anyway. I read your letter. I was just - I don't know, it's my own notebook and you'd been sitting by the window writing in it and I thought, oh, actually, I was probably thinking about my mother's case more than anything."

"One track mind."

"Shut up," she huffed, rolling her eyes in the darkness.

"Don't roll your eyes at me. It's true."

"You can't see that."

"I can _feel_ it."

"Whatever," she muttered, curling her knees up to her chest for stability. "So I picked it up to see how differently we approached the case. You like having the whole story layered out there, walking through it like you're in the middle of things, and I like the timeline-"

"I know this part already."

"Little less criticism from the peanut gallery."

"Get on with it then."

"Anyway," she exaggerated, felt herself smiling despite it. "I guess I opened it up to the middle of that letter. The first one you wrote for me. It was a little melodramatic, a little bittersweet, but it was so... you."

"I'm melodramatic and bittersweet?"

"Shut up. You know what I mean."

"Not exactly."

"Just let me get to the good part."

"I really wish you would."

"Hush," she chided, laughing now and not able to keep it back. It made her whole body ache to laugh, like the muscles had so atrophied that it physically hurt to shake them out again. "Your letter was all about how I'd changed your life and made it..."

"Richer," he supplied immediately, something choked in his voice that made her pause and breathe, listening to him.

"Richer," she finally echoed. "More than it was. And I'd just been - oh, I don't know. There's something about having done so very well in that hayloft only to be brought up short again by not being able to even climb back down the ladder. I'd been stuck up there and feeling miserable and stupid and-"

"No, Kate."

"Well, I had. Past tense. Forget the dumb emotions. What I'm trying to say is that you wrote me this letter at the exact moment I really needed it. I needed those words, needed to feel like I was worthwhile to you at all. And I don't think I ever explained how vital that was, how everything you did after that seemed... so much more."

"What do you mean?" he said quietly, and this time his voice came from her left, much closer, and she knew he'd almost worked his way around to her. Back to her.

"I'd missed you. I'd spent three months focused on healing myself and then there you were and I wanted to prove myself and prove I could still be your partner - not just in work and that damn case, but in all of this too. In love. That we were complements. And instead I'd gotten myself stuck up in a hayloft all afternoon and well into night, and you'd gone back for wine and pain killers and... and you left me there and I don't know."

He was right at her shoulder now. She could practically feel him. She wanted to reach out and skim her hand at his back but she needed first to say this.

"Left you there. In the hayloft."

She hummed, a note of incredulousness in her own tone because it was stupid. She knew it was. "I just missed you, Castle. And I didn't know how to admit to it then. Didn't know what it really feels like to have you so gone that admitting to missing you doesn't even seem ridiculous."

"You missed me."

"Then. Now. The worst part about being so rough, so easily broken, is not having you to just be here."

She felt his kiss an instant before his mouth found hers, unerringly and perfect, the soft and slow brush of his lips to hers like heat and love.

"I'm here," he breathed out.

"Yes," she sighed, reaching up to cup his face even though she could see absolutely nothing. Still she knew. She saw. "You always come back for me."

"I'd do anything, Kate."

She curled her arms around his neck and brought him against her, brought him so close that the black couldn't touch them.


	11. Chapter 11

**Close Encounters 9**

* * *

"Pick a different time," Castle whined. "Talk about something else."

He could hear the growl in her voice when she answered. "Fine. You pick it then. I _like_ knowing that I'm not as stupid as I was back then."

"Stone Farm was - I don't know." And even though he'd been halfway kidding, the truth of it was ugly and staring him in the face. "I don't want to think about when you were shot."

"Oh," she said, her voice small.

He forced himself to stop dwelling on it, moved his mind instead to the task at hand. Finding another tunnel in here. Some kind of private space where she could go.

She'd been right when she said that the light from the flashlight made it worse - it'd been harder to figure out what he was looking at when the shadows were deep and being thrown around whenever he moved the beam. Now, plunged into absolute black, there was only his hands and the sensation of rock. He would know this place intimately before it was all said and done.

"Pick a new time, then," she said.

"When we moved into our house," he said, randomly.

"The townhouse on Broome," she hummed. "I love our house."

"Me too," he grinned, his fingers fumbling and inelegant as the image came startlingly to mind. The afternoon sunlight through the windows and the way her body looked framed by all that light - first morning there, and he'd known then it was perfect.

"We had next to nothing," she laughed a little. "All my stuff was gone in the explosion. Okay, not all of it. But everything in the kitchen, the furniture. I loved that night we holed up in the hotel and surfed the internet for new stuff."

"You kept trying to convince me to get that hideous lime green chair."

"Shut up. It was gorgeous."

"It was garish."

"You have too many opinions for a man," she grumbled.

He chuckled at that and moved on to the next section of rock. It was almost a hopeless endeavor, finding some private water closet of a tunnel, but they didn't have much else to do until she could walk, until they could sneak around the Russian Army camped outside.

"Where's my story?" he whined a little. "You're supposed to be telling me a story, not complaining about my excellent taste in style."

"The day you surprised me with the key. To our house."

"Oh," he sighed, lips lifting into a smile. "I like that. Go for it."

"I was at the 12th, on their firing range getting my qualification back. Esposito was down there screwing with me."

"I asked him to stall you."

"What?" she said, breaking into a laugh that filled the whole space, tumbled around in the darkness.

"I told him to stall. I was signing the papers for the place and it was a nightmare going through the Company for escrow. Beckett, you have no idea."

She laughed again, a breathless thing that hurt to hear even as he loved it. How weak she was still, despite how good she sounded. The darkness could be deceiving in its intimacy.

"Lie down, Kate," he said quietly. "Lie down and tell me the story."

"You're such a bully."

But he heard her moving, shifting, the sleeping bag rustling as she laid down. He let out a little breath and closed his eyes a moment, needing it, and then he went back to the wall in front of him and the endless-seeming stretch of nooks and crannies and crevices.

"So when I finally got Esposito to stop screwing with me, I passed the requalification and brought my score sheet up to Gates. First time to really tangle with her and the boys were right outside the window, peeking in. This was back when I still had no idea what direction I wanted to go, what happened next, and she hated me for all the classified stuff I couldn't tell her."

"Yeah, Espo maybe went a little overboard, but I told him I needed at least until lunch. And then he texted me that Gates was gonna take care of the rest, inadvertently."

She laughed again, but it sounded funny coming from below him, behind his back, muffled by the sleeping bag. He heard it rustle as she shifted.

"Anyway, I talked with Gates, and we worked it out to get me back out there so I was feeling pretty great, you know? Strong and confident again and-"

"Fierce," he supplied. He still had the memory of the way she'd looked when she met him for lunch. "You walked into Remy's soaked in all of that triumph, Kate. You know, you wear victory like a model on a runway. It's erotic as hell."

She hummed in the darkness. A kind of thank you that he'd heard before - _under him_ in bed - and it didn't help the images crowding his brain. The darkness was deceptive, even as it was intimate. Had to remember, couldn't forget how easily broken she still was, right on the edge.

Twelve more hours of IV, at least.

"We had veggie burgers at Remy's. You'd already ordered me a chicken salad and I made you send it back."

He did laugh then, because she could be damn ornery and stubborn and strong-minded when she wanted, and he loved that too. "You did. And you had fries."

"Which you stole at least half of."

"I like eating your fries. You get really pissed."

"You're such a punk."

"Your cheeks flush."

"Moving on," she groused. "So we ate lunch and I was chafing to get back to the 12th, to really dig into it and get back on a case. Gates wouldn't give me my gun before that, remember? Because I wasn't official. I'd been so furious about that."

"Yeah, you might have been more pissed about that than the fries."

"Definitely. So I was looking to prove myself to her, jump right in, but you wouldn't let me leave. You kept trying to make me do one more thing or tell you one more thing. I think I told you to back off."

"I think you did." She definitely did. _Back the hell off, Castle. What's your problem?_

"Ohh, that sounds bad. Was it bad? I don't remember what I said specifically."

"You were - ready to go. Ready to do battle."

"And you were a casualty?" she sighed.

"Never a casualty, Kate. Maybe just ducking the crossfire."

She sighed a little but he made a noise to prompt her to continue and she did. "We got a cab together - I'd walked to Remy's and you said, _come with me a little ways, I'll drop you off_. And I believed you, but you told the driver all the way near Greenwich Village, and I was still thinking, oh that's fine, he'll let me out at the 12th on the way."

He snorted and she sighed; he could practically see her making a face at him.

"And then the cab turned onto our street, only I didn't know it was ours. I knew it was one of the places we'd looked at a couple weeks before, but it was so expensive and I hadn't gotten a chance to look at the money from my mom's estate before we heard it'd been sold, so I just thought you wanted to drive by, rub salt in our wounds."

"Yeah," he smiled.

"Yeah," she said back, and he could hear the smile in her voice too. "But we stopped and got out and I was - I don't know, I think I was mad because I wanted this place so much and it was out of our reach. But you took my hand and led me up the front stoop and I remember leaning against the concrete railing that divides our stoop from the neighbors' and the sun was on my face for the first time all day-"

"It'd been overcast. But it was sunny then, right after lunch."

"And it felt good and I felt good, and my eyes were closed because I was trying not to be mad at you for making me look at what I couldn't have. And then I heard the key in the lock."

"I loved watching your face," he breathed out. "As you figured out it was ours."

"That was the best sound. The tumblers falling open. Letting us in. I knew - in that moment, Castle, I knew. I knew we had issues and we were both dealing with paranoia and nightmares and your father and Bracken and just - despite that. I knew everything was going to happen just as we'd dreamed."

"Yeah?"

"Yes."

The dark was so deceitful, but it showed him visions of everything he wanted, everything they dreamed of together, and it reminded him once more of the empty extra bedroom at the top of the stairs.

"When we get home," she said suddenly.

"Yes," he said, a prayer and a certainty. They were going home; there was no way they weren't going home.

"I want us to try."

"Try?"

"I know it will take some time. I'm not sure how fast my body will rebound after this, and there was... the plutonium, Castle, and I took off my radiation suit, so I don't even know if I can, but-"

He stood very still, his breath harsh and in time with hers. "Kate."

"But if we can. If we can, I want it."

"You took off your suit?" he whispered. "Right then?" He'd found her without it, of course, but had she stripped it off that day, the day the whole place went up?

She was silent.

Wrong question. And not an answer she was prepared to give him right now, judging by her silence. He turned around and sat down hard, the rock at his back like a wall.

"If we can," he started slowly. "Then yes. Yes. Kate... anything."

"But think about it first. Do you even want-"

"Of course I do," he rasped out quickly. "Yes. We've talked about this."

She took in a shaky, trembling breath and laughed a little. "Our cute, klutzy kids, right?"

"Yeah." He smiled into the darkness between them, sucked in a breath that just wouldn't come. How immediate it was, and yet how distant. How close to impossible.

She took off the radiation suit _when_?

"I want a boy, Castle."

God, he was going to give her a son or die trying.

* * *

When he stopped trying to find a tunnel that probably wasn't there, he came and sat down with her again. Kate crawled into his lap and laid her head on his thigh. She hadn't liked having that last conversation in the dark, with him so far away, untouchable, but this made up for it.

His palm was heavy on her hair but not moving.

"No second tunnel," he said finally, breaking the silence.

"I figured."

His fingers skipped around her ear in a nervous gesture she didn't understand. "I brought - I have radiation pills, Kate."

She knew that already; she'd rifled through his pack.

"Castle, sweetheart," she sighed. "You and I both know that they only work as a preventative. Not a cure."

He let out a long breath.

She squeezed his knee. "Hoping to fool me?"

"Yes," he rasped. "They only - they're basically no good. They protect your thyroid but your internal organs, skin, your lungs. . ."

"I know," she said quietly. "But you were the one who said plutonium is low-level radiation."

"It is," he said quickly. "And if you had high enough doses to do damage, you'd know by now."

She closed her eyes and sighed. "Castle. Symptoms of small-dose radiation sickness are?"

"Oh," he said tightly.

Nausea. Vomiting. Infection.

"Shit," he muttered, and his hand tightened at her jaw. She turned her head and kissed his wrist with a faint brush of her lips. She was tired and she wanted to sleep, not have this part of the conversation, but she knew he always needed to know. The details. He had to have the details, the whole story.

So she laid it out, best way she knew how.

"I had a concussion," she said calmly. "The sickness could be due to that. It can take as long as six weeks to stop feeling the effects of a concussion."

"Yes," he scraped out. "That's true."

"I don't have any other acute symptoms. No bleeding. And it's a good sign that I've been able to keep down food so far. I don't think that would be possible if I'd been... exposed like that."

"When?" he said. "When did you take off your suit?"

He didn't ask why. She wondered if that was because he trusted her to make the decisions necessary to survival or if he assumed the when would answer the why.

It just so happened that it did.

"I - found you unconscious after the mortar shell," she started, hooking her arm around his thigh as if she needed to hold on. It was his wounded leg as well, and the implications weren't lost to her. "You were bleeding very badly, Castle. I made a tourniquet with it."

"With your _suit_?" he growled out.

She kept her mouth closed, waited for his anger to flash out. He always did this, always had that spark of quiet rage that he let himself feel and feed and seethe, and then he controlled it.

The radiation suit was on top - her top layer of clothes. She'd had to open it up anyway, even if she'd used something else to stem the flow of blood. She would've had to unzip the suit to use her shirt or something, so it wasn't like it could've been helped.

His hand gentled on her jaw but his fingers stroked down to her neck. "Ah, Kate."

"I know."

He let out a ragged breath and his thumb pushed into her spine at her neck, the instant of pain suffusing down into pleasure.

"They told me I nearly lost the leg," he choked out finally.

She pressed her mouth to his thigh. Reclaiming it.

"We'll figure it out," he said then. "We'll - it will work out. There are things we can do. It doesn't - it's not the final word."

She smiled at his pants and finally closed her eyes. "Getting ahead of ourselves here, super spy. Let's make sure we escape Russia before we sign up for adoption."

"Yeah," he said quickly. "Yes. Okay. We will. We're okay."

"Don't sound so unconvinced," she said, lifting up on an elbow. "Come down here with me, Rick. You'll feel better if you sleep with me."

"That's for sure," he said heatedly.

She pinched his side and he yelped, but he was already shifting down beside her.

"You should sleep too," she murmured, letting him arrange them in the sleeping bag. "You almost lost your leg not two weeks ago."

"I'm fine. I'm fine."

"Neither of us are fine," she whispered. "I think maybe admitting it is the best thing we can do for each other right now."

His arms tightened around her, a noise in his throat. But he pressed his mouth close to her ear and confessed, "I'm not fine. I'm this close to breaking. The moment we get home, we get safe, I think it's gonna be bad."

"Okay, okay," she said, smoothing her hands at his cheeks, in his hair. "You stay together for me until then, sweetheart, and we can hole up in the panic room for a month. More. As long as you want. And you can do anything you want to me. Okay, baby? Anything."

He let out a strangled noise that seemed to turn into a laugh, and she smiled as well, knowing it'd get to him, get him back.

"Yeah. I'm holding you to that."

"Hold away. Preferably with handcuffs."

And then he did laugh, a dry thing that made his body release down into hers, and she held him there, cradled against her, for as long as she could take it.

* * *

"Hey, baby, doing good."

She glared at him, her eyes narrowing in the blue light. "Call me baby one more time, Castle."

"But I always call you that."

"You weren't also _feeding_ me, you big bully. Force-feeding, you know. So back off."

He grinned and had to hide it from her, turning back to his pack and digging out the container of shakes. "Want another?"

"Hell, no," she grumbled. She'd just sucked down the last of yesterday's strawberry nutrition shake, but it'd taken her nearly an hour. At the end, he'd had to do a little more intensive motivating, practically tilting it down her throat.

"What if you drink another one and then I give you some crackers?"

She sighed. "Fine."

If she really couldn't take it, he wouldn't ask her to. But they'd both realized there was a timetable here if they wanted to get out of Russia. It was unspoken so far, but the fact that she watched mutely as he shook another foil pack and punctured it for her to drink told him that she knew.

Had to fatten her up. It was going to be a long trip.

"Here," he murmured, handing it over.

She took the shake and he ripped open another package of crackers, gave those to her as well. Back off the baby stuff, huh? Okay. He got the hint. Apparently she wanted to talk about something else, put their focus back on the here and now.

He got it. "Hey, how about I tell you a story?"

"You're a terrible story-teller," she muttered around the pack.

"I've gotten better."

"Some."

"Give it a chance," he growled at her, nudging her knee with his fingers. She rocked a little, less steady than he'd thought, but they pretended it hadn't happened, avoided each other's eyes as she knocked back more shake in the blue light of the torch.

"Fine. Give it a shot, Castle. I'll be the judge."

"Okay, best story ever. So one time I found myself shadowing this NYPD detective."

She snorted.

"She was on a case that was important to national security and so I had to follow her around, make sure that certain information didn't fall into the wrong hands. You know. Spy stuff."

"Scintillating."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "She was, actually. What do you know?"

She laughed at that, tilting her head and lifting a hand from the foil package to stroke against his shirt. He grinned back, pleased, and captured her hand at his chest.

"So I abducted her-"

"Naturally."

"Of course," he scoffed, ignoring the way she giggled. Who was he kidding? Hearing her giggle like that made his whole body light up. "Of course. So I interrogated her at my office, found out what she knew, and then we decided to work together on the case. And we've been doing it ever since."

"That's a damn long case. You two can't be any good."

"I hate you."

"Is that the end of your story?"

"No. Let me finish. You hush," he muttered. "We blew up gun smugglers in Copenhagen, we got engaged at Stone Farm - a rehab facility in an undisclosed location, we outsmarted the police in Paris, we got married in Rome. I had to use a cover identity to buy my wife a dog-"

She sucked in a breath and the rhythm of her drinking faltered. He paused, watching her, but she shook her head, tapped her fingers against his chest with the hand still trapped there.

"What, Kate."

"Nothing."

What had he said? It had just been a funny way to recap the last few years of their life, whirlwind and amazing and scary as it had been. But what had she heard in that rendition that brought her spine jerking upright like that? Didn't look like she was going to get into it now, so he kept going.

"She told her family that she met me working a case, that I'm a translator for the UN. We went to a huge Irish wedding and I lied through my teeth and she helped - she came up with the best details because she can really tell a story."

"That's more like it."

He flashed her a smile but she still had that edge to her. "We bought a house. A beautiful house. And the dog likes to sleep in the extra bedroom like she's waiting for us to get on with it already, fill it up already."

Kate shivered and closed her eyes, the shake forgotten in her lap.

"Tell me," he said.

She opened her eyes and stared back at him. "Wolf."

His chest deflated. "Ah." The wolf. Shot dead in front of the cave. "The rescue family called her that, didn't they?" he said quietly. "I'd forgotten."

"Just too... too much when I wanted only to go home."

"We're going home, Kate." He brought her palm up and kissed it so softly. She leaned in towards him and came to his shoulder, her cheekbone hard against the edge of his collarbone. "I'm taking you home."

She nodded, the movement jostling her body and making her list a little harder into him. He wrapped an arm around her and his fingers came to the packaged shake still in her lap.

She took the hint and brought it up to her mouth once more, drawing it slowly, working at it.

He was taking her home as soon as she could walk out of here. He'd carry her if he had to.

* * *

She slept hard but woke when he started fiddling with her IV. "Castle?"

"Hey. IV's done."

She'd slept for... eight hours then? "Shit," she groaned. "Did you sleep at all?"

"Off and on," he said too easily.

"Liar."

"Some."

She didn't know if that was the truth either. "You taking it out?"

"Yeah. You ready? If it bleeds..."

"I know." If they couldn't make it stop bleeding, he meant. If it was another problem to add to their already overwhelming problems. "Cross that bridge if we come to it."

"Yeah," he said quickly. "Okay. Here we go."

She felt him ripping the tape off, and then glanced over to watch him in the soft light of the flashlight. His eyes were concentrating, his brow furrowed as he worked, and she felt the catheter come out, felt the bruising in the crook of her elbow.

It ached a little, but it didn't feel too bad. "That was a good line," she said with a smile.

"I'm good at sticking," he said back, deadpan, and she laughed.

Kate reached across and stroked her fingers at his jaw, the scruff now thick enough that she felt the individual hairs of his beard, growing in soft. She leaned in and kissed the side of his nose and he nuzzled into her.

"How're you doing?" he murmured.

"Just tired," she admitted.

"You should go back to sleep. There's more shake if you-"

"Not yet. When I wake up again," she admitted. She couldn't. She thought maybe the crackers had been too much. It just made her so tired. "You should sleep, Castle. You're going to need it too. Maybe more than me."

They both knew what she meant. Once they got moving, got out of this cave, it was going to be a rough couple of days - and Beckett would be no help at all.

He'd be doing it alone.

"Yeah," he said then. "I'll lie down with you."

She could hear it in his voice; he didn't know how they were going to do this either.


	12. Chapter 12

**Close Encounters 9**

* * *

Castle didn't want to sleep, felt wired instead of tired, but when she'd told him he ought to anyway, he couldn't say no to her. Since he liked being on his back and she seemed to want to curl at his side, they were comfortable at least, even if they were both still awake.

"I thought you were tired," he whispered.

"I am."

"Let go, Kate, honey. Just sleep."

"Can't."

"Stop thinking about it," he insisted. The next few days were going to be brutal, yes, but no point dreading it.

"I really wish you'd rest while you can."

"I'll try. But you know how it goes for me."

"Are you having dreams?" she whispered.

"Of course," he muttered. "Never ending these days."

"You know, Castle, we have a lot of therapy hours logged between the two of us. Bet we could knock it out right here."

He huffed and drew his arm tighter around her. "Just - dreams about white light."

"What?" she said, a little laugh in her voice. "Sorry. Not funny. Go on."

"No, you're right. It is a little. But the concussion I got - I don't know. Pain behind my eyes and then these spots. White spots."

"Are they gone now?" she said quietly, her hand gripping the waistband of his pants.

"Yeah." Mostly. Yes. He'd had an episode right before he'd found her, but he thought that was stress. Fatigue. "Nothing to worry about. But the nightmares are more of that. Only this time it's like - I don't know - I'm flying a plane and I crash into a mountain. White light."

"Shit."

"Yeah. Sometimes you're with me, in the next seat, and sometimes I'm just trying to fly to get you-"

"That's weird. Flying a _plane_ to come get me here?"

He closed his mouth, frowned.

She must have picked up on his unnatural silence because she stiffened. "Castle. You didn't."

"I might have... tried to steal a plane."

"In your dreams."

"Heh," he laughed, half-laughed, not really a laugh. "Um. Yeah, but no. In actual real life, when I woke - look, in my defense, my brain got scrambled pretty hard, Kate. You weren't there, Black was feeding me lies. It made sense at the time."

"It made sense to walk on the leg you almost lost with white spots in your vision and _steal a plane_?"

He grunted.

"Shit. Castle."

"I got your message. On my phone," he defended. "I got your note and you scared the shit out of me, Kate."

She went quiet for a moment and then her hand flattened out at his abs. "In my defense, my brain got scrambled pretty hard. And I was soaked in your blood, Castle. Soaked. It was coming out of you faster than I could stop it and I knew Black was going to tell you as little as he could get away with and I just - it was the only idea I had."

He sighed and turned onto his side so he could wrap both arms around her, bring her body up close to his. "The plane. It was the only idea I had. And I only made it as far as the tarmac."

"Shit. That you made it that far at all."

"Ditto, sweetheart."

And even after that, they were quiet for a very long time before Castle felt her fall asleep within his arms.

He listened to her breathe and counted the beats of her heart within each minute, reassuring himself.

* * *

She had to get going. Enough of this. Time to move.

Beckett handed him back the shake - she really couldn't, not anymore - and then she struggled to get to her feet. She'd had sleep and some nutrients, she was off the IV, and it was time.

"What are you doing?" he said.

"Help me up," she said back, on her knees now and leaning against his shoulders for balance.

Castle automatically reached up and gripped her by the wrists to stabilize her, but he didn't let her stand. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Gotta get moving, Castle."

"Kate."

"You said thirteen days since - and I walked here, obviously, but it's been five or six since I got here and I need to get a little more - conditioned."

The way his eyes shuttered told her he hadn't quite thought through all the details of the last thirteen days; she wished he still hadn't.

"Help me up, Rick," she said quietly.

"We can do muscle manipulations sitting down," he said back. "PT stuff. Build up your-"

"I have to walk out of here in about 24 hours. There's no time for endurance training. You know it and I know it. So _help me up._"

He did, which told her that he'd already worked it out for himself as well, how tight they were cutting this, how difficult it was going to be. He hadn't known what he'd find, and what had he expected? To carry her out of here and cross the border like that?

Right.

She nearly sank back down to her knees when he got her standing. Beckett locked onto his forearms even as he gripped her by the elbows, and she swayed there for too long a moment, just getting adjusted to being upright. Her thighs quivered, the muscles shaking as they hit a wall. She'd heard it was easier to come back from traumatic injuries if a body was already fit and in shape to begin with. She needed that to be true.

"Tell me a story," he said on a breath.

She groaned and leaned back from him, took a shuffling step away. "Walk me around," she said back.

"You gotta talk to me so I know you're not passing out."

"I will. Just - start." She knew he was thinking to get her out of breath, wheezing, that it would be a measurement to them both for how weak she was. That was fine, probably smart. Pushing it too far was a bad idea at this stage.

Castle wrapped his arm low around her waist and came at her side, easing them forward. The blue light of the flashlight glowed like ghost fingers across the rocks, and she let her head rest against his shoulder as they started a slow circuit of the cave.

"Talk, Beckett."

"I wanna go to a baseball game when I get back."

He grunted.

"With my dad. And I want you to come," she said, swallowing down the wild thrashing of her heart in her throat. She'd taken two steps. Two steps and her heart was going to fling itself out of her body.

"Okay. I'm not really into sports - isn't baseball boring?"

"It's not boring," she exclaimed, but she was losing breath and leaning hard into him. His hands flexed around her.

"Sure, but it's... slow."

"It's a thinking man's game. You'd like it if you gave it a chance."

"Do we have to go to the Yankees?"

"No, no, we're Mets fans. The old Shea Stadium - I have the best memories of games with my father."

"Oh yeah? What about your mom?"

"Not her thing."

He grunted beside her and she felt the panicky sensation of looming unconsciousness crawling up her spine. Her palms were sweaty, her eyes dimming. So not good.

"Talk to me, Beckett."

"I... I think-"

"Okay, all right. Enough," he growled out, and he dropped them both to one knee immediately. She slumped into him and he scooped her up, carried her far too easily back towards the sleeping bag.

She was going to faint.

He propped her feet up on his shoulder and leaned into her, his thumb brushing along her forehead, wiping away sweat.

"You don't need to get dehydrated," he growled.

"I know. I'm not. I'm not," she promised, closing her eyes as the world slowly shifted back. "But you know I gotta do this."

He was silent for a long time before he spoke. "Fine. Sleep for a couple hours and then I'll get you up and we'll walk. Okay?"

She sighed out, relief pouring through her body. "Yes, yes. Okay."

They had to get moving. She had to get moving.

* * *

They walked.

"Full circuit," he said, studying her. She looked sick with fatigue but too determined to stop.

"Is that pride in your voice?" she mumbled against his shoulder. She was canting badly, and he was practically holding all her weight, but her legs were moving.

It counted.

"Yes," he answered. "Don't twist my ear for it."

"I like your ears. They're soft."

"Beckett, are you slap-happy?"

"With exhaustion maybe," she sighed out.

The cave was lit with blue, the light still strong. He wished he'd had access to LED but he'd been in a hurry and he'd packed the supplies he could get his hands on. They'd have to turn off the flashlight in a few minutes.

"Still like your ears though," she said.

He would laugh but he had a restlessness running through his blood. To get on the move. She was right - she was always the one to look at a thing head on and put it bluntly. They had to go. He wanted only to let her sleep and heal and regain her strength, but they didn't have the luxury. They never did.

"A few more feet," he said, nudging at her hip to get her moving. She shuffled forward, a line of tension radiating down her body. "Come on, Beckett. Sleeping bag awaits."

"I love that sleeping bag. Can we keep it?"

"Sure," he said easily. Whatever she wanted. Anything to have her look forward to getting home. "Want me to bring home some of those nutrition shakes?"

"Hell, no," she growled back.

He did laugh at that, a hand rising quickly to catch her shoulder before she could pitch too far forward. She grunted but took the last few steps, her breath whistling in her lungs, her body damp with sweat.

"Good job, you got it," he let out, the relief pouring from him as well. He sank them slowly to the sleeping bag, a tight grip on her as her muscles seemed to refuse to work, and then he was falling to one elbow with her, cradling her over him.

"Sorry, sorry," she murmured.

"It's okay. I got you."

He laid there for a long second, catching his breath as well, running his fingers up and down the knobs of her spine. She was so thin. Her skin shifted and rolled right over every ridge of bone, no fat to hold it in place. He could feel every caught breath, every expanse of her ribs, and he moved his feet slowly down to the foot of the sleeping bag, arranged them both into a more comfortable position.

"I'm okay now," she murmured at his neck. Her fingers were shaking against his chest, actual tremors that he could feel.

"You should drink one of the protein shakes," he said quietly. "Rebuilds muscle after a workout."

She grunted and he knew the idea wasn't attractive at all right now, that the last thing she wanted to do was put more food in her stomach, but instead of saying no she just rolled onto her back.

"Yeah. Okay."

He rose to one elbow and dug around in the pack, used the blue light to find the right one. The protein shakes - he'd intended to give them to her on the trip back out of here, but he had underestimated the need.

His fault. He'd been so hellbent on getting the fuck out of the hospital that he hadn't taken the time to think it all the way through. He'd gotten close, but he should've remembered-

"You should have one," she said suddenly.

"What?" he muttered, distracted as he squeezed the pack to mix the contents.

"Castle, I haven't seen you eat anything since you got here. Nearly two full days."

"I'm okay."

"Don't do this, Rick."

He paused, his hand tight around the protein shake.

"If you're not - I'm depending on you to do most of the work here," she said quietly, her voice scraping. "That turn we took around the cave just proved I'm not going to be able to keep our usual pace. You're gonna have to start using the shakes as well. Start now, give yourself a boost, and then go back on rations."

It made sense. Damn it, she always made sense.

"You know I'm right."

"I know," he said finally.

Castle sat up and used his knife to puncture the foil package, turned finally to hand it to her. She was watching him so closely.

"Here," he said. "I'll drink with you."

She let out a sigh and reached a shaky hand for the package. Their fingers brushed and that same spark of electric and gut-twisting energy curled between them. His whole body aligning and orienting and needing hers.

He had to get her out of here. He had to.

* * *

She wanted to go with him this time.

Kate could tell by his voice that he wasn't at all happy about the idea, but she was determined. While he'd slept, she'd gotten up and done more walking, another circuit of the cave all by herself - in the dark no less. And even though she'd had to stop and lean against the rock more times than she could count, even though she'd stubbed her toes on every single outcropping of stone imaginable - she'd made it.

She was going with him.

By the thrumming tension in his voice, she thought Castle's jaw was so tight he might grind right through his enamel. "No. Kate. No."

"I'm coming with you," she said again.

"Kate. It's not a _walk_. It's crawling through that tunnel and then over the rocks just to make a perimeter check."

"I know that. I have to do it tomorrow. Might as well do it today."

"How long have you been awake?" he muttered.

"Long enough to finish off another shake," she said, and she knew she'd surprised him.

"You did?"

"Yes."

The darkness without the flashlight was so deep, so immutable, that Castle - in her mind's eye - was as fixed as the rock walls.

"Rick, I have to do what I can _now_ when I've got the chance to rest afterwards. We both need to know how bad it's going to be, how much work it's going to take."

"I already know. It'll take forever," he said roughly.

"Then leave me in the tunnel to do your perimeter check-"

"Woman, clearly you have lost your mind. Because leaving you in that tunnel will never happen. Never. Gonna. Happen."

She smiled into the dark, the unrelenting black, smiled because he loved her and he was fierce about her and he kept her safe from herself. But she could push him; she could always make him do the right thing.

"I'm coming with you," she said again.

The flashlight switched on and illuminated a pool of light around them. In the shadows, she could just make out the grim set to his face as he sat opposite her.

"Well, come on then," he said, lifting to his feet. He held out his hand for her and she smiled up at him, clasped her fingers around his wrist in a tight grip.

He hauled her up in one powerful movement and she brushed against his chest before she found her feet.

"Thank you," she whispered.

His mouth coasted at her ear for a breath. "Don't thank me yet."

* * *

Castle was ahead of her only because he had to move the rocks out of the way; she couldn't do it herself, not like she was, and he had to stop every few feet and wait for her to catch up.

It was agonizing. He had no idea how the hell they were going to make it out of Russia with her like this.

She managed to make it to the scree of rocks and she closed her fingers around his ankle in wordless confirmation. Castle silently began shifting the blind, creating a gap for them to slide through, passing rocks back to her so she could spread them out along the tunnel. Less room with both of them cramped inside and so he needed her help.

"Hold on," she murmured when he offered back another.

He paused, listening to her breathing in the blue darkness. The light was mostly hidden by his own bulk, a little unsteady in her hand, but enough shone through that he could see what he was doing.

"Kate."

"I got it," she breathed out. He felt her fingers now fumbling against his and then she had it, and he heard it drag against the rock floor of the tunnel as she pushed it past them.

He swallowed hard and kept working at the scree, pulling rocks from the closed up entrance and trying to ignore the sound of her labored breathing behind him.

"That's the last one," he said quietly. "Leave it there."

She let out a puff of air at that and Castle began crawling over the remnants, wondering how in the world she'd be able to do this, drag herself over these rocks. Tomorrow he'd clear the whole pile, leave it completely free so that she only had to crawl on her hands and knees over the smooth floor.

But could they waste her energy that way? Clearing a bunch of damn rocks.

No. Tomorrow he'd go ahead of her, make her wait in the cavern while he cleared the whole pile of them faster without her clogging the tunnel. That was it. Okay.

So yes, this had been a good idea. A dry run so they'd know what she was capable of, how to maneuver.

"Go, Castle," she panted.

He grunted and realized she'd made it over the rocks a good deal faster than he'd expected. "You okay?"

"Really tired of being trapped."

"Yeah," he grunted out, scuttling forward quickly and pausing only a heartbeat at the entrance before spilling out into the wider cave.

He turned around and stooped down, reached back in and gripped Beckett by the arms, half carried her out. She got to her feet and swayed, her eyes closed as she hung on to him, and he took a moment to let her get it together.

"You got this," he murmured at her ear.

"Not sure," she whispered.

"You got it, Kate. You can do it." He wrapped his arm around her waist for support and she slumped into his embrace, knocking him off balance, not ready for it. She grunted but he had her, he had her, and he kept her propped up.

"Sorry," she breathed out.

"Long as you need it."

"My dumb idea."

"Good one though," he murmured back, brushing a kiss to her temple. He was surprised she hadn't asked to get cleaned up, to wash her hair out, and he was taking it as a huge sign that she wasn't ready. She didn't feel good enough. Not to wash her hair, and not to walk out of here either.

What the hell were they going to do?

* * *

It seemed impossible.

Home was further away from her now than it had been in the last thirteen days.

She closed her eyes and felt her knees buckling, but Castle leaned back against the sloping rock wall of the cave, shifting his knee between hers to hold her up.

She sighed out against his chest and buried her nose into the skin and sweat smell of him, tried to push out everything else until she could get a grip on herself. Get a handle on this, get used to how wasted her body was after so long curled up on the floor of that cavern.

Shit. She'd choked down charred wolf meat and alternated between shakily vomiting and passing out for the last... five days? No idea. How much of that meat had actually made it into her system, she couldn't even guess.

"How're you doing?" he rumbled at her ear.

She gripped his biceps and swallowed down the discouragement. He was counting on her; she knew he'd never leave her to go get reinforcements, resupply, none of that. He'd kill himself trying to get her out of here - so she had to be better than this.

The responsibility of that alone made her want to cry.

"Go outside," she said then. "Can we?"

"Of course," he said, his fingers tightening at the back of her skull.

She lifted her head and turned towards the front of the cave, inhaling the smell of rock and cold, the faint taste of water in the air. He kept an arm slung around her waist and half carried her towards the front, but she was determined to move her feet, to make the effort even if he was doing most of the work.

When the light began to filter through to them, she remembered the flashlight and thumbed it off, her hands trembling. She pushed it towards Castle and he snagged it from her right before she could drop it; he slipped it into a pocket of his pants.

Kate reached out a hand for the rock wall, trailing her fingers along its dry and scratching edges, watching the light grow.

God, the sunlight.

"What time's it?" she said, clearing her throat when the words tangled.

"Around six in the morning," he answered. "Maybe closer to seven now."

She nodded and tried to keep from stumbling over the rougher parts of the cavern floor where it looked like the very earth itself had grit its teeth and then opened a mouth to the sky.

She let out a long, shaky breath and swayed at the entrance, her eyes riveted on the flash of shimmering pearl, the way the earth lent color to the sky. The wash of light flooded over her as she took a step forward but Castle was pushing past her.

"Wait a moment," he breathed.

She slowly slid her eyes to him, watched the way the light touched him as he slipped out of the cave. His hair was a halo, his ears pink in the morning sun, and the violent blue of the sky made her whole being ache.

She sank to her knees even as he scouted the entrance; her hands were pressed against the sun-warmed rock and the vista before her wheeled and spun out, making her dizzy.

"Russians on our two o'clock. Have to be-" Castle turned. "Kate."

She blinked and shifted her gaze to him, the light licking along his body. She rocked forward and felt the sun on her face, the burn of its touch along her cheeks, her forehead, and even though it couldn't be all that warm and the air was still chilled, she closed her eyes and soaked it in.

"Kate," he murmured, and she felt his fingers caress her neck.

"Sit with me," she whispered, her eyes still closed.

"A few minutes," he gave in, and she felt his arm come around her.

She listed into the broad warmth of his body and let the sunlight work magic over her.

* * *

Castle sighed when she fell asleep against him, his chest tight with the sight of her curled up in the sun. He'd not seen her in full light, just the forgiving beam of the flashlight, and now-

Oh, God, it was bad.

She'd always been on the border of too-thin, her body hard and taut as a wire, whipcord strength. But the muscle tone had gone as well as whatever thin layer of fat she might have had. As she breathed slowly against him, he could see the harsh angle of her collarbones, feel the jut of her ribs. The knobs of her wrists were wider than her ulna and radius, her fingers were skeletal.

Shit. Shit. It just - it was bad. She looked scary malnourished, and he was struggling to keep from dragging her back into that cave and force-feeding her for the foreseeable future.

Her face was so narrow, so angular that he worried about her vision, about renal failure. Because those necessary organs - eyes and kidneys - required the fat to hold them in place, keep their sensitive conduits and nerves and tubes open and functioning.

It was that bad.

Had been, he reminded himself. Had been bad.

It wasn't now. She'd gotten 36 hours of IV fluids and she'd already downed four nutrition shakes plus a handful of crackers. He had peanut butter in his pack as well and he'd make her eat that with the crackers next. Start putting some richer fats into her body.

And then everything else. The starvation was one thing but the battered state of her body made her look like she'd been through a war.

The angry teeth marks on her forearm had begun to heal though, now that he'd cleaned it. He would bandage it before they left, make sure she didn't get dirt in the wound. He reminded himself to check her hip later too, see if he could maybe take the stitches out. He wouldn't try to do it again; he'd just have to make an assessment over whether or not the skin would hold together.

But it wasn't just those major wounds - it was her whole appearance. The sun was brutally revealing, and he could see the story of her survival stamped deep in her body - the scars and battles, the effort of existence.

Her face was scratched up, her arms crisscrossed by lines of dried blood and welts, the sting of shrub brush and rock. The scrapes on her face went down her neck and disappeared under the flimsy white shirt. She had to be cold out here, the sun wasn't warm by any means, but her exhaustion had subsumed even that response and had left her heavy against him, revealed to his eyes.

The thin and bloodied fingers curled at his leg, the bruised look to her skin, the gnarled and matted tangle of her hair conspired to break his heart.

She was breaking his heart.

Castle stroked gently across the line of a scratch that marred her cheek, followed it down her jaw to where it tapered just at her neck.

His hand was shaking.

Seeing her like this made him want to blow things up, take down the whole damn Russian Army camped just outside their cave. It made him want to _rage_.

And if he couldn't fucking destroy something, then he wanted to cradle her against him and use his body as a shield, protect her, hide her away from the world, nourish her until she was strong again. Until the wounds were healed and her spirit strong and the scars had completely melted away.

But he couldn't do that either.

The only thing he _could_ do was the one thing he abhorred.

He had to wake her up and get her moving; they had to get out of here.

She couldn't rest. Not yet. Not for a good long while.

They had to leave.

* * *

So ends **Close Encounters 9: Tomorrow Never Dies**

Stay Tuned for **Close Encounters 10: The Living Daylights**

* * *

Uh-oh.

Russians. On the steppe. Dead ahead.

"Drop, Kate," he hissed, reaching back and dragging her down with him.

Castle felt her land on top of him, his back crunching hard against the rocky ground, his elbows jarred where they met the earth. She was breathing hard over him, and he cradled the back of her head as he turned them, laying over her now, bracing himself on his raw elbows.

He had to stop paying more attention to her than to their surroundings. His fault.

He felt her hand slide down his back, shove against the pack tight at his spine, and then her fingers tucked into his pants and drew his weapon.

He froze.

She brought the gun between them and her eyes were glittering in the darkness. Wordless, she handed it over to him and he took it slowly, wrapping his fingers around the grip.

And then he saw she had the knife.

That scared the shit out of him. These guys were _not_ getting close enough for Beckett to use that damn knife. Her fucking hand was shaking. No way. No.

He gritted his teeth and pressed his knee down into her wrist at her hip, kept her there; he felt her curl under him, a brief struggle, and then she released her fingers and dropped the knife.

When he was sure, he let his knee up and kept his eyes on the three men making their slow way across the rocks. He couldn't tell from this distance if they were Army for sure, but their lack of formation and the general looseness to their walk made him think not.

Beneath him, Kate let out a long breath and sucked in another one, so he lowered his head to hers, their cheeks brushing so that his mouth was at her ear.

"Natives, sweetheart. We'll just hunker down here and keep out of their way."

She let out a quick breath and then her fingers were wrapping at the back of his knee in a grip so tight, so fierce, that he'd never forget.

Never.

How the relief poured out of her.

**X**


End file.
